Marie Meyerding – Walter Benjamin Postdoc at the Institute of Art and Music

Marie Meyerding has been conducting postdoctoral research on "Landscapes of Surveillance: Environmental Art and the Stasi in the Global GDR" at the Institute of Art and Music at the Chair of Visual Culture in the Global Context of Prof. Kerstin Schankweiler since May 2024 with a Walter Benjamin Fellowship from the DFG. In this interview, she explains how she became aware of the work of Kerstin Schankweiler and her team and provides insights into her current research.

Marie Meyerding is an art historian who received her doctorate summa cum laude in African art history from the Free University of Berlin and an MA with distinction in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art. In her dissertation, she examined the representation of women in the history of photography in apartheid South Africa. Her research project examines the role of the environment for the art field in East Germany in the 1980s to determine the extent to which environmentally conscious artistic approaches were influenced by the Stasi as well as by local or global phenomena. Meyerding's research has appeared in African Arts, Third Text, kritische berichte, Critical Arts, Safundi and sehepunkte, among others. Her first book "Sights of Struggle", which tells the story of the women of Tambo Village through their texts and the photographs of Mavis Mtandeki, was published by Lecturis in spring 2023. In the summer of 2023, she curated the exhibition "Defiant Visions" at the non-profit organization apexart in New York City, in which she expanded the public perception of anti-apartheid imagery by showing how women photographers resisted oppression through the lens of their cameras. Meyerding's research has been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, the Peter E. Palmquist Foundation, the Photography Network and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

You recently completed your doctorate at the FU Berlin. Why did you decide to continue your research at TU Dresden? How did you find out about the Institute of Art and Music at TUD and how do you like it here so far?

Already during the development of my new research project on environmental art in the GDR, Kerstin Schankweiler and her team repeatedly appeared with their prominent and highly topical research on the global GDR. Not only through the comprehensive internet platform "Art in Networks" but also through the conference "The Global GDR. A Transcultural Art History (1949-1990)", which took place at the Albertinum in 2022, and publications such as the 2023 book chapter "Im Archiv der globalen DDR. Testimonies of transnational art histories", made the research of the Institute of Art and Music at the TUD internationally visible and promised exciting discussions with and critical feedback from Kerstin Schankweiler and her team for my research project. So far, I like it very much at the Institute and I am pleased that I have already been able to take part in the summer festival and co-moderate the symposium "Reise(un)freiheit - Mobilitäten von Künstler*innen zur Zeit des Kalten Krieges" at the Albertinum.

Up to now, your research interests have mainly focused on the art history of Africa, especially South Africa. What prompted you to turn your attention to art in the GDR?

During my dissertation research, I found several references to German history and the division of Germany, which relate not only to the chronologically congruent framework of the second half of the twentieth century, but also to reflections on art and photography in the transition between different social, political and economic systems. As a methodological starting point for this focus, which has only just begun, I would like to apply the approach of intersectional objectivity developed in my PhD, which is based on Donna Haraway's argument of the localization of knowledge for the achievement of feminist objectivity. The detailed examination of regional case studies, clearly defined in terms of both time and space, should provide insight into global structures and their changes with a focus on social, political and economic power relations. My analysis will focus on artistic institutions, individuals and practices in different countries in a defined period of time, taking into account connections, causes and effects in order to investigate intersectional issues in a social context. I will therefore pursue my new research project on environmental art in the GDR based on similar questions as in my doctorate on gender and intersectionality as well as institutional history and critique.

In your current research project, you are looking at the "triad of art, the environment and the Stasi", as you yourself write. What connections are there between these three points, which at first glance don't seem to have very much in common, and what interests you in particular about this triad?

Using the triad of art, environment and Stasi, I would like to shed light on transnational flows of money and ideas in order to question a strictly national art historiography and emphasize how concepts of nature and art changed on a regional and international level through mutual exchange. In the project, I explore how artists engaged with surveillance in urban and rural landscapes through different artistic media. I highlight different coping strategies and stylistic devices to show how artists dealt with and resisted the Stasi's surveillance strategies and methods. I would also like to analyze the role that questions of gender and intersectionality played in the fields of environmental art and state surveillance in the GDR. The aim is to expose mechanisms of power that were then, as now, used for surveillance and discrimination both in the art world and in society as a whole. By examining environmental art that encounters moments of surveillance, my research aims to use the example of the GDR to reveal the power structures of the art world that shed light on changing dynamics between humans, nature and machines. This in turn could improve our understanding of the role of artists and governments in dealing with environmental disasters and the effects of climate change today.

Are you currently planning any other events in connection with your project - exhibitions, lectures, etc.?

On October 11, I will be giving a lecture on "Mail Art and Environmental Activism" as part of the online workshop series on "Women and Mail Art. Gendered Perspectives on Marginal Artistic Practices".

And finally, something personal: what should never be missing from your desk?

A glass of sparkling water and headphones to listen to music while working.

What was the last book you read? Alternatively:
What was the last movie/series you watched?

I'm currently reading "What we dream of" by Lin Hierse.

You can find more information about you at:

I share links to my writing and news on my website www.mariemeyerding.com. You can also find me on Instagram as @mariemeyerding.