Chris Dercon is a museum-director, cultural theorist and a cultural producer at large, with a special interest in time based arts. For a long time Dercon worked in the Belgian and Dutch TV-industry as a presenter, writer and maker of cultural documentaries, among others 'Still a Novel' for VPRO, Hilversum in 1996.In the 1980's Dercon amongst other media-activities was lecturing, teaching video and cinema in Brussels. He was a member of film festival juries, in Brussels, Rotterdam, Locarno and Sarajevo. Dercon wrote about video and cinema among others in the Cahiers du Cinema, Skrien, Vertigo, Schnitt and Mousse.
In the 1990's, as a museum-director in Rotterdam, he worked closely together with the International Film Festival Rotterdam. With festival-director Simon Field, he developed the series 'Exploding Cinema' presenting works by experimental filmmakers such as Shirin Neshat and young Steve McQueen.

In collaboration with Ideale Audience in Paris he worked on 'Elegie d'un Voyage' of Alexander Sokurov. Dercon worked on 'Primitive' by Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, a pilot-project for Joe's celebrated 'Uncle Boomhee' with Illuminations Films in London.

Dercon also worked on different projects and presentations with celebrated TV and film directors Stefaan Decostere, Jef Cornelis, Garin Nugroho, Johan Van der Keuken, Christoph Schlingensief, Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz.

At the beginning of the nineties, as director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Dercon collaborated on several presentations with the Filmmuseum Munich. He has been director of Tate Modern since 2011, where together with Tate's film-curators Stuart Comer, George Clark and Andrea Lissoni, he is strongly advocating art-cinema from a global perspective.

For many years Dercon has been a dedicated fan of words and images by Serge Daney, Jean-Luc Godard, Alexander Kluge and Romuald Karmakar.    

Dercon is the designated director of the Volksbühne Berlin where he will work on projects with Kluge, Karmakar, Weerasethakul and Albert Serra.