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Astrid Schmetterling

Staff details

Astrid Schmetterling

Position

Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures/co-Head of Department

Department

Visual Cultures

Email

a.schmetterling (@gold.ac.uk)

Astrid Schmetterling’s research focuses on the relation between history, culture and memory.

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 in Art History and German Literature, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1986

Teaching and supervision

As Co-Head of Department, Astrid is currently only teaching one module, namely the MA Special Subject on ‘Transcultural Memory’.

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.

She has examined PhD theses at UCL, The Courtauld Institute, Goldsmiths, Birkbeck, University of East London and University of Sussex.

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.

Grants and awards

2017: Robert Bosch Stiftung, Grenzgänger (Crossing Borders) Travel and Research Grant

2009: AHRC Research Leave Scheme

Publications and research outputs

Book

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2017. Charlotte Salomon. Bilder eines Lebens. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag. ISBN 978-3-633-54283-3

Schmetterling, Astrid and Turner, Lynn. 2013. Visual Cultures As Recollection. Berlin: Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-3-943365-40-5

Book Section

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2022. Erna Pinner: In Frankfurt und in der Welt / Erna Pinner: In Frankfurt and in the World. In: Eva Sabrina Atlan and Mirjam Wenzel, eds. Zurück ins Licht: Vier Künstlerinnen – Ihre Werke. Ihre Wege / Back into the Light: Four Woman Artists – Their Works, Their Paths. Bielefeld/Berlin: Kerber Verlag, pp. 115-119. ISBN 9783735608567 (German Edition) - 9783735608635 (English Edition)

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2022. Else Lasker-Schüler. In: Karin Althaus; Sarah Bock; Lisa Kern; Matthias Mühling and Melanie Wittchow, eds. Kunst und Leben 1918 bis 1955. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag / Lenbachhaus, pp. 176-179. ISBN 9783422990661

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2022. Charlotte Salomon. In: Karin Althaus; Sarah Bock; Lisa Kern; Matthias Mühling and Melanie Wittchow, eds. Kunst und Leben 1918 bis 1955. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag / Lenbachhaus, pp. 220-223. ISBN 9783422990661

Article

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2015. ‘Biographien jüdischer Frauen: Zur Aktualität Charlotte Salomons’. Medaon – Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung, 9(17), pp. 1-5.

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2013. ‘K. Hannah Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews: History and Identity in the Museum’ (Book Review). Journal of Jewish Studies, 64(2), pp. 427-430. ISSN 0022-2097

Schmetterling, Astrid. 2012. “I am Jussuf of Egypt”: Else Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalist Drawings. Ars Judaica, 8, pp. 81-98.

Professional projects

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).

Conferences and talks

2024: Nikita Kadan's Art in a Time of War
Subtle Transitions (conference and workshop), Prague City University and Charles University, Prague

2023: Memory Debates – Memory Scapes: Politics of Contemporary Art from the Global South
Co-Hosted Workshop, Memory Studies Association Annual Conference, Newcastle

2023: Erna Pinner in Frankfurt, London, and the World
Insiders Outsiders Festival, London

2022: Carrie Mae Weems: The Endless Weeping of Women
Memory & Arts Working Group Panel, Memory Studies Association Week of Virtual Events

2021: Kunst, Trauma und Zeugenschaft am Beispiel von Elżbieta Nadel
Paradoxe Bildung – Widerstand – Überleben. Der geheime Unterricht und Kinderzeichnungen im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, University of Hildesheim and Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück

2021: Historical Convergences in Nikita Kadan’s Art Practice
Memory Studies Association Annual Conference, Warsaw

2020: Pluralität und Nebeneinander von Erinnerungsperspektiven
Requiem für die Lebenden. Ein Kolloquium zu aktuellen Perspektiven des Gedenkens und der Trauer, #WOD Weltoffenes Dresden, Dresden

2019: 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