Canadian born Theodore (ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer and organizer whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture. To stay in touch subscribe to his newsletter, Since Ted Talks was Taken.

In 2022 his book, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, with co-author, Alexandra Juhasz, was published by Duke University Press. His writing has also appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, The New Inquiry, BOMB, CBC (Canada), Lambda Literary, POZ Magazine, The Advocate, Cineaste, The St. Louis American, IndieWire, HyperAllergic, and other publications. In 2016, he won the Best Journalism award from POZ Magazine for his HyperAllergic article on race, HIV, and art. In 2019, Kerr was the editor of On Curating Issue 42, What You Don´t Know About AIDS Could Fill a Museum. In 2015, Kerr was the editor of Time Is Not a Line: Conversations, Essays, and Images about AIDS Now for the We Who Feel Differently journal. 

Kerr was ISSUE Project Room´s 2022 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow. He presented THE BODY POPULAR, a curated series of gatherings and broadcasts, propelled by artists, podcasters, writers, and others in NYC across the U.S. invested in questions around power, community, knowledge, and consumption in the 21st century. The series included 3 programs: Beyond the Flat with Zachary Fabri + Samantha Box at Weeksville; Audio Meme with James T. Green, Josh Gwynn + Leila Day; and I, Of Course, Was Livid with Elizabeth Koke for What Would an HIV Doula Do?. For the US National Library of Medicine, Kerr curated a travelling and online exhibition: AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health: A People’s History of a Pandemic. Kerr also worked with the David Zwirner exhibition More Life to produce the With Art / With HIV publication featuring charles ryan long, Eva Hayward, Jessica Whitbread, Kairon Liu, Lois Conley,Malaya Lakas, Ricky Varghese, Shyronn Tavia Jones, Sunil Gupta, Szymon Adamczak,and Yuè Begay.

Kerr is a founding member of the What Would An HIV Doula Do? collective active since 2015 of people committed to better implicating community within the ongoing response to HIV/AIDS. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collective has been active considering multiple pandemics in tandem. In 2021, they produced cultural production exploring the last 40 years of AIDS response in the US. In the winter of 2019, WWHIVDD curated an exhibition for the One Archives and the NYC LGBT Center entitled, METANOIA: Transformations through AIDS Archives and Activism. The collective’s work has been featured in The Body, Art in America and POZ magazine. 

In 2016 / 2017 Kerr performed 10 interviews for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project. Kerr received his oral history training from Suzanne Snider as part of the Oral History Summer School. He was a member of the New York City Trans Oral History Project. Working with the Brooklyn Historical Society, Kerr indexed their AIDS oral history project. 

Creating postcards, posters, stickers, and collages, Kerr's art practice is about bringing together pop culture, photography and text to create fun and meaningful shareable ephemera and images. Collaboration is a big part of Kerr's art practice. He has made work with Zachary Ayotte, L.J. Roberts, Zoe Dodd, Chaplain Christopher Jones, Niknaz Tavakolian, Bridget de Gersigny, Malene Dam and others. He has been in exhibitions and projects curated by Kris Nuzzi, Sur Rodney (Sur), Danny Orendorff, Ellyn Walker, and others. Two of his works, in collaboration with Shawn Torres and Jun Bae, are part of DePaul Art Gallery's permanent collection. 

With Aldrin Valdez, Kerr is a co-founder of Foundational Sharing, a performance and publishing platform. Since 2013, Valdez and Kerr have hosted 5 Foundational Sharing salons, and been invited to produce the event with the Bowery Poetry Club, CUNY, Visual AIDS and Queer Art Mentorship. 

Under the direction of Amy Sadao and Nelson Santos, Kerr was the programs manager at Visual AIDS where he worked to ensure social justice was an important lens through which to understand the ongoing epidemic. He also served as the programs manager at the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. In 2007, he was a founding member of Exposure: Edmonton's Queer Arts and Culture Festival. Working with collectives, organizations and solo, Kerr has organized events at the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, BQSQD, Bluestockings, The New School, Housing Works and other locations.

Kerr earned his MA from Union Theological Seminary where he researched Christian Ethics and HIV, and his BA from the New School where he was Riggio Writing and Democracy fellow. Currently, Kerr teaches at The New School and Manhattan College. He has lectured at Hunter College, Rutgers and Skidmore College.

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