Astrid Schmetterling
Staff details
Astrid Schmetterling’s research focuses on the relation between history, culture and memory, between the act of bearing witness and the act of making art.
In this context, she is interested in contemporary international arts practices (see her co-authored book with Lynn Turner on Visual Cultures as Recollection and her articles on Arnold Dreyblatt, Vivienne Koorland, Ulrike Grossarth and Uriel Orlow) as well as in early 20th century German culture (see her work on Charlotte Salomon and Else Lasker-Schüler).
Schmetterling’s writing is informed by the insights of diaspora, postcolonial and transcultural memory studies.
Academic Qualifications
MA in Arts Criticism, City University, London, 1990
BA (Hons) in Art History and German Literature, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1986
Teaching
Astrid Schmetterling is Joint Programme Leader of the BA History of Art, together with Louis Moreno, and is part of the 'Modernities' team on the BA Year 1 programme and of the 'Contemporaneities' team on the BA Year 2. She also teaches the MA Special Subject on ‘Transcultural Memory’.
Area of supervision
Being part of the department’s research clusters ‘Culture, Memory, Futurity’ and ‘Globalization and Transcultural Practices’, Astrid Schmetterling supervises projects on questions of memory in relation to modern and contemporary representational practices. She also welcomes proposals that pertain to issues of post-colonialism and the global circulation of culture.
Membership of Professional Associations
Astrid Schmetterling is a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and co-chair of the "Memory & Arts" Working Group within the MSA (Memory Studies Association).
Selected Recent Presentations
'Kunst, Trauma und Zeugenschaft am Beispiel von Elżbieta Nadel’, Paradoxe Bildung – Widerstand – Überleben. Der geheime Unterricht und Kinderzeichnungen im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, DFG (German Research Foundation) Project of the University of Hildesheim in cooperation with Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, 2021.
‘Historical Convergences in Nikita Kadan’s Art Practice,‘ Memory Studies Association 5 Annual Conference, Warsaw, 2021.
‘Pluralität und Nebeneinander von Erinnerungsperspektiven’, Requiem für die Lebenden. Ein Kolloquium zu aktuellen Perspektiven des Gedenkens und der Trauer, #WOD Weltoffenes Dresden, Dresden, 2020.
‘Two Galician Families and a Rescue during the Holocaust’, Research Seminar, Memory & Arts Working Group (Memory Studies Association), London, 2019.
‘Es ist Mein Ganzes Leben – Die Malerin Charlotte Salomon’, Zeiss-Planetarium Bochum and Zeiss-Planetarium Berlin, 2019.
‘Holocaust Research and Creative Practice’, London College of Communication, 2019.
‘Laydeez do Comics: The “wildly unusual” work of Charlotte Salomon’, Jewish Museum, London, 2018.
'Travels to Galicia', Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, London, 2018.
‘Else Lasker-Schüler: Writer, Performer, and Artist’, Goethe-Institut London, 2017.
‘Charlotte Salomon – Bilder eines Lebens’, Literaturhaus Munich, Annabee Bookshop Hannover and Art and Cultural Centre Spedition Bremen, 2017.
‘The Timeliness of Charlotte Salomon’, Reflecting on Charlotte Salomon, Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, 2017.
‘Uriel Orlows Unmade Film: Ein multidirektionaler Raum für palästinensische und israelische traumatische Erinnerungen’, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, 2016.
‘Dor Guez: The Sick Man of Europe’, ICA, London, 2015.
‘Charlotte Salomon: Jüdin, Exilantin, Künstlerin’, Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2015.
‘Erinnerung’, Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden, 2014.
‘Uriel Orlow’s Unmade Film: A Multidirectional Archive for Palestinian and Israeli Traumatic Memory’, Infinite Record: Archive, Memory, Performance, York St. John University, York, 2013.
‘”Heim nach Polen”: Yael Bartanas Projekt der Jüdischen Renaissance Bewegung in Polen’, Unentrinnbares, Unzerstörbares? Zum Jüdischen und dessen Diskurs in der deutschjüdischen Literatur und Philosophie, ICI Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, 2013.
Grants and Awards
2017-2018 Robert Bosch Stiftung, Grenzgänger (Crossing Borders) Travel and Research Grant
2009-2010 AHRC Research Leave Scheme
Research Interests
Astrid Schmetterling’s research focuses on the relation between history, culture and memory, between the act of bearing witness and the act of making art.
In this context, she is interested in contemporary international arts practices (see her co-authored book with Lynn Turner on Visual Cultures as Recollection and her articles on Arnold Dreyblatt, Vivienne Koorland, Ulrike Grossarth and Uriel Orlow) as well as in early 20th century German culture (see her work on Charlotte Salomon and Else Lasker-Schüler). Schmetterling’s writing is informed by the insights of diaspora, postcolonial and transcultural memory studies.
Astrid Schmetterling’s current project interweaves biography, history and memory theory. It traces the histories of two families, that of her own Jewish family and that of the Polish family that hid them during the Holocaust in an empty pigeon loft in the Eastern Galician town of Kopyczyńce (then Poland, now Ukraine).
Different temporalities – the act of hiding during the Holocaust, the postwar period, losing and finding one another after the fall of communism, the unusual bond between the families in the present – will be linked chronologically, but also associatively with the experience of travel in the Ukraine now.
The historical, the imagined and the actual contemporary Galicia will thus productively disrupt each other. Beyond the act of rescue, Astrid Schmetterling is interested in the divergent experiences of the two families under the different occupiers of multiethnic Galicia.
This will involve an engagement with incompatible experiences and memories of the Jewish, Polish and Ukranian populations informed by recent thinking on transcultural and multidirectional memory (Astrid Erll and Michael Rothberg). In addition, reflections on questions of memory and postmemory (Marianne Hirsch) and Astrid Schmetterling’s role as mediator of this history will critically interrogate the narrative and shape the form of the project.
Publications
Book
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Book Section
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Article
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