Lisa Blackmore | University of Essex

Email
lisa.blackmore@essex.ac.uk
Telephone

+44 (0) 1206 872192
Location

6.139, Colchester Campus
Academic support hours

Spring Term 2024 Tuesdays – 11:30-12:30 Thursdays - 11:30-12:30 If you prefer to meet via Zoom during these times, please email me: lisa.blackmore@essex.ac.uk

Profile

Biography

My research focuses on human relations to the environment, and connections between politics, art and architecture. in Latin America and the Caribbean. At Essex, I work closely with the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) threading its unique holdings through my teaching in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies Center, and curating public exhibitions and public programs for the University gallery Art Exchange. I am passionate about public engagement and draw on my experience working in journalism and cultural industries to connect my research to broader conversations and diverse audiences. My current projects merge practice and research, involving writing and editing publications on the arts and ecology, with curatorial and audiovisual projects. My most recent publications ask how humans relate to rivers through analyses of infrastructures, sound and installation art, poetry and sensory connections to water. In 2018, I founded the international interdisciplinary research group entre—ríos, a network of artists, scholars and active communities engaged in igniting connections to bodies of water through art practice, exhibitions, books and public programmes. Our projects are published on http://entre-rios.net - a digital platform that is always moving and changing. My previous research focused on the relationship between authoritarian politics and modernist art and architecture. My first book Spectacular Modernity: Dictatorship, Space and Visuality in Venezuela, 1948-1958, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), analysed an array of visual and spatial phenomena, from vintage newsreel and state propaganda to carnival pageants and military parades, to show how authoritarian politics shaped public imaginaries of modernism. The follow-up book, Downward Spiral: El Helicoide's Descent from Mall to Prison, edited with Celeste Olalquiaga, traced similar treads through the story of a unique modernist building designed as a shopping centre but now used as a political prison.This research featured in the BBC documentary "El Helicoide: The Shopping Mall That Became A Torture Prison" in 2019. My postdoctoral research at the University of Zurich focused on how authoritarian regimes affected bodies and landscapes, producing spaces of ruination and traces of violence in memory,. As part of this project, I co-directed the feature-length documentary film Despues de Trujillo/After Trujillo (2016), which told the story of urban modernisation and political violence under Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961) and the cultures of memory related to his regime. It is available online at https://dlf.uzh.ch/sites/despues-de-trujillo/ After studying Modern Languages at Cambridge University, I did a Masters degree in Latin American Cultural Studies and PhD in Spanish at Birkbeck College, London. I've taught at universities in Caracas and Leeds, and worked as a curator, journalist and translator. I joined the School of Philosophy and Art History 2017, where I am Director of Global Studies and Director of the MA in Environment, Society and Culture,

Qualifications

PhD Birkbeck College, University of London, Latin American Cultural Studies
MA Birkbeck College, University of London, Latin American Cultural Studies (Cultural Theory & Critique)
MA (Cantab) University of Cambridge, Modern & Medieval Languages (French & Spanish)

Appointments

University of Essex

Senior Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies, School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex (1/10/2019 - present)
Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies, School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex (1/8/2017 - 30/9/2019)
Director MA Environment, Society and Culture, University of Essex (1/10/2021 - present)
Director of Global Studies, University of Essex (1/10/2020 - present)
Director of Latin American Studies, University of Essex (1/8/2017 - present)

Other academic

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Zurich (1/9/2014 - 31/7/2017)

Research and professional activities

Research interests

Modernity in Latin America

Open to supervise

Visual culture

Open to supervise

Space and politics

Open to supervise

Memory politics

Open to supervise

Human-nature relations

Open to supervise

Water, hydraulics, liquid ecologies in the arts

Open to supervise

Environmental aesthetics

Open to supervise

Photography

Open to supervise

Digital culture

Open to supervise

Contemporary visual production in Latin America

Open to supervise

VENEZUELA RESEARCH NETWORK. With Dr. Penélope Plaza (University of Reading), Dr. Rebecca Jarman (University of Leeds).

Current research

Spatial Legacies of Dictatorship: My current research centres on spatial legacies of dictatorship in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, and these countries' memory politics and historical amnesias. As well as tracing the uses of architecture and space to shore up authoritarian regimes, I explore the ways that such sites often slip from view and become ruins of dictatorship, and examine how contemporary artists recuerate such sites in their work to shed light on blind spots of collective memory.

Modern Ruins: I am completing a multi-disciplinary, co-edited volume on El Helicoide: a modernist, spiral-shaped, drive-through shopping center built in the 1950s in Caracas, then left unfinished, used as an emergency shelter for flood victims, then eventually taken over by the intelligence police as a headquarters and jail. Combining archival documents, critical analysis, literary texts, and visual commentary, the book traces the turbulent history of this living ruin and reveals the dystopic side of urban modernity.

Hydraulics and Aesthetics: Parallel to this, I am working on two articles that address the intersection of hydraulics and aesthetics in spatial arrangements and visual production, looking at human-nature relations in fluvial landscapes, hydropower, river shanty towns, and ecocritical art.

PROYECTO HELICOIDE. With Celeste Olalquiaga, Caracas-New York-Santiago.

Conferences and presentations

Downward Spiral: El Helicoide's Descent from Mall to Prison

Invited presentation, PLAS Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton, United States, 6/3/2019

The construction of a spectacular architectural modernity in Venezuela in the 1950s and its spatial legacy in the 1960s

Invited presentation, Contesting Modernity: Art and Politics in Mid-Century Venezuela, Houston, United States, 27/10/2018

Counterflows: Decomposed Landscapes and the Visual Economy of Mass Tourism

Global Dominican – Politics, Economics and Cultural Production, ILAS/IMLR University of London, London, United Kingdom, 22/6/2018

(De)colonizing Flow: The Aesthetics of Water in South America

Marine Transgressions, Bristol, United Kingdom, 8/6/2018

Counterflows: Hydraulic Imaginaries and the Landscape in the Dominican Republic

Decentred / Dissenting Connections: Envisioning Caribbean Film and Visual Cultures, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 29/5/2018

CONTRAFLUJOS: IMAGINARIOS HIDRÁULICOS Y ECOLOGÍAS RESIDUALES EN LA REPÚBLICA DOMINICANA

Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, Lima, Peru, 30/4/2017

Hydraulics and Aesthetics in the Orinoco Basin. Natura: Environmental Aesthetics After Landscape, University of Zurich, 13 June 2017

Zurich, Switzerland, 2017

Contraflujos: Imaginarios hidráulicos y ecologías residuales en la República Dominincana. LASA Congress, Lima, Peru, 28 April1 May 2017

Lima, Peru, 2017

Después de Trujillo: Telling Stories - Academic Research and Filmmaking, LASA Congress,Lima, Peru, 28 April1 May 2017

Lima, Peru, 2017

Archival Landscapes and Epistemic Frontiers: Notes on the Work of Ángela Bonadies. College Art Association, New York, 1518 February 2017

New York, United States, 2017

Kino Toni, ZhDK, Zurich,1 April 2017

Winterthur, Switzerland, 2017

Ethnokino, University of Bern, 27 March 2017

Bern, Switzerland, 2017

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, 16 February 2017

New York, United States, 2017

Skidmore College John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative, 13 February 2017

Saratoga Springs, United States, 2017

University of Toronto (Mississagua & St George Campuses), 8-9 Feburary 2017

Toronto, Canada, 2017

Life Aquatic: Contemporary Dominican Landscapes. ABRALIC, Rio de Janeiro, 1923 September 2016

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016

Blind Spots in the Modern Landscape, LASA Congress, New York, 27 May1 June 2016

New York, United States, 2016

Blind Spots: Towards a Revision of the Modern Landscape, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies Conference, University of Oxford, 6-7 January 2016

Oxford, United Kingdom, 2016