This summer, Prof. Elena Shtromberg accepted the invitation of the Chair Visual Culture Studies in a Global Context and will conduct research in Dresden as a TU Dresden Fellow in the summer semester of 2021.  Elena Shtromberg is Associate Professor at the University of Utah. She specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American visual culture. Her book, Art Systems: Brazil and the 1970s (University of Texas Press, 2016), for example, explores visual forms of critique and subversion during the height of Brazilian dictatorship. Her interdisciplinary research interests extend to gender and media studies, cultural studies, as well as communications, geography and postcolonial theory.

She has been the recipient of grants from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and DAAD, among others. During her research leave in 2011-12 she was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

We talked to Prof. Elena Shtromberg:

What are your main interests as a researcher?

I am interested in how artists globally respond to social, political and economic phenomena with their art and how engaging with their works teaches us how to be more aware and committed citizens of the world.

What is it about research that you find appealing?
For me the process of speaking to artists and working in archives, libraries and museums is why I became a Professor and no matter what topic I am working on I become very involved and interested by it.

What does your current research focus on?

I have several research projects I am working on. The first is a scholarly monograph called, The Politics of Memory: Video Art in Latin America. It focuse on how video art in Latin America engages with historical memory.

In Dresden, I am also working on the Global GDR project with colleagues here. I am specifically looking at relationships between artists in the GDR and Latin America and what we are finding is that there is quite a rich and layered history with a lot that has yet to be written about.

What other projects have you worked on?

I have  also curated a number of exhibitions, the latest among them a co-curated survey entitled “Video Art in Latin America” which opened in September 2017 at LAXART (an alternative art space in Los Angeles), part of the Getty Foundation’s initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.

Which item do you absolutely need at your workplace?

That is a good question, I think I absolutely need a notebook and pen. For me, writing in my notebook is a way of thinking so if I only have my computer I feel like I can’t develop ideas.

Which book did you recently read? / Which movie/series did you watch recently?

I recently read Red Pill by Hari Kunzru about a writer who gets a research fellowship in Germany to write a book. This story appealed to me but it doesn’t end so well. I am confident my experience will be better! I watched a few movies on the plane here and A Promising Young Woman stands out. I have been trying to watch the movies that won Oscars.

Do you have a quote that inspires you?
I don’t really have a favorite quote. I am always interested in quotes by writers, especially women writers about their writing process so I tend to save those. Here is one by the Chilean author Isabel Allende, “Write what should not be forgotten.”