Lena Sophie Trüper

Ph.D. Student

E-mail: lstrueper@g.ucla.edu Fields of interest: Global Media Cultures; Environmental Humanities; Gender Studies; Critical Theory; Medical Humanities; European Cinema

Lena Trüper is a Ph.D. candidate of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include visual popular science, histories of cybernetics, digital art, colonial medicine and performance studies. In her dissertation project she is thinking through histories of cybernetics from an angle of postcolonial and gender studies.

Before coming to UCLA, she has been a research fellow DFG research training group “Knowledge in the Arts” at the University of Arts in Berlin. She also got some work experience at several museums, including Städel Museum Frankfurt, Fowler Museum UCLA, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Max-Planck-Institut for Empirical Aesthetics, Goldkammer Frankfurt and DZ Bank Art Foyer Frankfurt.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN

German (native), English (fluent), Spanish (fluent), French (intermediate), Italian (elementary), Portuguese (reading knowledge).

Education

M.A. University of California, Los Angeles, German Studies
M.A. Goethe University Frankfurt a. Main, Art History
Professional formation, IGS Gersthofen, chemical laboratory assistant

Courses commonly taught

Fliegende Frauen (Flying Women), primary course instructor, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany, 2024-25
Lesen auf Augenhöhe (Reading of Eye Level), primary course instructor, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany, 2024
Choreographien des Schreibens (Choreographies and Writing), primary course instructor, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany, 2023
Holocaust in Film and Literature, teaching assistant, UCLA, 2023
History of Berlin, teaching assistant, UCLA, 2023
Media Ecologies in Postcolonial Contexts, primary course instructor, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany, 2022
German language, level 1-3, primary course instructor, UCLA, 2021
Systemtiere, primary course instructor, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany, 2019
Methodology of Art History, teaching assistant, Goethe University Frankfurt a. Main, 2013-15.

Honors and Awards

UCLA Harry and Yvonne Lenart Graduate Travel Award 2024-25
Hessen Film & Medien, film production award, 2024
UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship 2021
UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship 2020
MACBA Barcelona, Programa de Apoyo a la Investigación 2019
Deutschlandstipendium (German Fellowship), 2014-2015

Professional Activities

Goldkammer Frankfurt, tour guide, 2019
Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, data base development 2018-2019
Städel Museum Frankfurt, art education and mediation, 2018
Kunsthalle Darmstadt, curatorial assistance and web administration 2015-2016
Deutsches Filminstitut Frankfurt, internship exhibition Fassbinder Jetzt, 2013

Affiliations

German Studies Association
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Modern Language Association
Society for Media Studies (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaften, GfM, Germany)
Executive board member of ELTS Graduate Student Association at UCLA, 2022-2024

Publications

“Cell Cultures and German Nationalism. A Visual investigation” (upcoming)
“Aufgeklebt…teilweise abgerissen. Paging up the German Colonial Image Archive“ (upcoming)
“Von Ökosystemen und verkabelten Kartoffeln Maschinenkünste im Argentinien der 1970er Jahre,” in Theorie und Praxis der Maschinenkünste im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert: Prozesse – Medien – Kreativität, Berlin: de Gruyter, upcoming 2024.
“Biopolitics and Superstition in Barbara Albert’s Film Böse Zellen,” in Sophie Duvernoy, Karsten Olson, and Ulrich Plass (eds.) Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film, New Directions in German Studies, vol. 39, New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 254-276, 2023.
“Opening the Cage atHungría 74: Hungarian Artists in Argentina and Their Critical Take on the Dematerialization of Art Objects,” in Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis (AAAV), no. 105, 141-168, 2022.
“Visual Natural Metaphors of Cybernetics in Arts and Popular Culture,” in J.M. Morcillo, C.Y. Robertson von Trotha (ed.) Genealogy of Popular Science, From Ancient Ecphrasis to Virtual Reality, Bielefeld: transcript, 441-460, 2021.
“No One Knows What Cybernetics Is! On Communication and Control in Art after 1945,” in Museum Folkwang Essen (ed.) The Assembled Human, Berlin: Kerber, 2019.
“Macht’s gut, und danke für den Fisch! Meerestiere als Metaphern der Virtualität. Ein historischer Einblick in das visuelle Erbe der Kybernetik,” in ffk Journal, 4, 231-249, 1019.
“Das Bild als Datensatz. Ein Kommentar zu neuen Methoden der quantitativen Bildanalyse,” in Reproduktion und Methode. Eine Medienarchäologie der Abbildung in der Kunstgeschichte, Blog Studiumdigitale, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2015.
“Die Kunstgeschichte – ein Grabungsfeld für die Medienarchäologie?” in Reproduktion und Methode. Eine Medienarchäologie der Abbildung in der Kunstgeschichte, Blog Studiumdigitale, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2015
“Von Menschenbildern und Textmaschinen. Was Cyborgs im Film über den Wandel medialer Kommunikation erzählen,” in J. Bracker (ed.), Visual Narratives – Cultural Identities, Visual Past, No. 3.1, 7, 469-508, 2016.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

“Hungry Flies,” Princeton-Weimar summer school, Princeton/USA, 2024.
“Contesting Cybernetic Futures,” annual graduate student conference Speculative Futurities, Past and Present,, UCLA, Los Angeles/USA, 2024.
“The Silent Sounds of War,” seminar Sounds of War, Sound Studies Network, War and Violence Network, 47th annual conference, German Studies Association (GSA), October 5-8, Montréal/Canada, 2023.
“Fly paper,” lecture performance, international conference Sticky Films. Conceptual and Material Explorations, June 1-3, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main/Germany, 2023.
“Cell Cultures as Metaphors for Individual and National Health,” seminar The Medical Humanities in German Studies, 46th annual conference German Studies Association (GSA), Huston/Texas, 2022.
“Juan Downey’s Video Journeys through the Americas,” panel Imaging back: Young Filmmakers, Community Media, and Activism, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, annual conference, March 31-April 3rd, Chicago/(online), 2022.
“On Ecosystems and Wired Potatoes. Machine Art in Argentine in the 1970s,” conference Theorie und Praxis der Maschinenkünste, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, FHNW Basel /Switzerland (online), 2021.
“Evolution in one minute – The fastest workshop ever made,” interfiction conference XXVII, Kassel/Germany (online), 2020.
“Die Wahrnehmung als Wasseroberfläche. Zur visuellen Integration in kybernetische Ökologien” (Perception as Water Surface. On Visual Integration in Cybernetic Ecologies), annual conference German Society of Media Sciences (GfM),University Siegen/Germany, 2018.
“Visual Natural Metaphors of Cybernetics in Arts and Popular Culture,” international conference Genealogy of Popular Science. From Ancient Ecphrasis to Virtual Reality, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe/Germany, 2018.
“On Images of Humanity and Textual Machines. What Cyborgs tell about us about Media Change,” graduate student conference Visual Narratives – Cultural Identities, Aby Warburg Haus Hamburg/Germany, 2014.

EXHIBITIONS, FILM SCREENINGS AND PRODUCTIONS

Wake the Flies. Humanitarian Crisis in Nigeria’s Plateau State, film producer, Frankfurt am Main/Germany and Jos/Nigeria, 2024.
Collage and Film, screening series organizer, in cooperation with the Archive for German experimental and avant-garde film by women, University of Parderborn, Kunsthalle Darmstadt/Germany, 2016.
Love Sounds (Masha Tupitsyn, 2015), exhibition organizer, Kunsthalle Darmstadt/Germany, 2016.
Re:Affine, exhibition organizer, Zollamtstudios, Offenbach am Main/Germany, 2015.
From Mars to the Zone. Soviet Science Fiction Film, screening series organizer, Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) Frankfurt/Germany, 2013-14.
This is all you are – 540min, exhibition organizer & film producer, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany.
Possibilities of Emancipatory Art Today, student conference board member, Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany, 2012.