Getting to Know: Chris Fernald

What brought you to join ACA this year? What would you like to accomplish by year's end, and what are you hoping to give?

I was really hoping to work with Williams undergrads during my time here, so I was so pumped to learn about ACA. My great hope is that there will be something useful in my experience for each of you as you develop as creators and interpreters of culture. Please feel free to reach out if you need advice, perspective, or anything else.

I suppose my main goal for this year is to help make ACA a welcoming and enriching space where you all feel supported to take risks, think greatly, have fun, and come together in common interest.

And while I’m greatly looking forward to supporting you all in your endeavors this year, I can’t wait to learn from you, too.

Do you have a practice of creative production or consumption? Tell us about it.

I consider myself an artist, a writer, and a cultural programmer. I got a BFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and I originally set out to pursue a career as an artist. I don’t think I’ll ever give up art and a creative practice, but these days, I’m more content to speak to people through other mediums, like writing, lectures, studio visits, para-institutional programming, and curating. Common themes that appear in my work include techno-spirituality, post-human cosmologies, pop music, lifestyle minimalism, animism, and the digital’s relation to the afterlife.

What's a conversation in contemporary culture that you feel particularly attuned to or interested in?

Since I wrote this question and came up with the examples…all of them? "Decolonization," the relevance of the museum or gallery, stan culture, the efficacy of DEIA initiatives, the rise of deep fakes and the stability of truth, the question of whether art must uphold certain moral values, the #FreeBritney movement, performative homosexuality in K-Pop, free speech and censorship, appropriation in fashion, the politics of Zoom backgrounds, the mainstreaming of club culture in pop music, the influencer/attention economy...

What is your cellphone wallpaper?

For someone who is so interested in digital culture, I’m incredibly slow to adapt to new media—or even update my phone regularly. I’ve had the same lock screen since 2013—a photo of my friend Diandre and me posing in some costumes from a friend’s performance piece.

What song are you most embarrassed to love?

I think the territory for musical embarrassment has shrunken over the last decade and a half. These days you get clout for having embarrassing tastes. That said, culture always needs its pariahs—something must always be out for something else to be in. Avril Lavigne - “Tomorrow”.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? What do you want to be doing?

Some mix of educator, host, lecturer, forecaster, curator, programer, writer, scholar, interpreter, nurturer, convener/connector, leader in creative endeavor, slash public intellectual.

Beyond that, I hope to be helping to create a more joyous, healthy, peaceful, green, and equitable world in whatever small way I can.

What does your cultural diet look like? Since we're mainly producing and consuming culture online these days, what websites do you most frequent? What do you do when you get there?

My digital diet has changed considerably since starting school. I feel pretty unadventurous and don’t often have a lot of time to browse. So if I log on I’m checking the news on MSNBC, Vox, or Twitter. I have a couple accounts I follow whose hot takes really make my day. Same goes for Youtube, where my browsing history mainly consists of plastic surgeries, BLACKPINK, history documentaries, lectures, and workout vids.