Biography

Lena Sophie Trüper is a Ph.D. candidate in 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, she explores the connections between the histories of hygiene and the cybernetics as epistemologies of behavioral control through a global and transcultural lens.

Prior to her doctoral studies at UCLA, she held a position with the DFG Research Training Group Knowledge in the Arts at the University of the Arts Berlin. She has also gained research and curatorial experience at several museums and cultural institutions, including the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, the Goldkammer Frankfurt, and the DZ Bank Art Foyer in Frankfurt. While completing her dissertation (expected 2026), she holds a position as Research Assistant in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Research Institute.

Education

• Ph.D. Candidate in German Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, 2022-2026 (projected)
• M.A. in German Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, 2020-2022
• M.A. in Art History, Goethe University, Frankfurt. Department of Art History, 2011-2017
• Vocational training as chemical laboratory assistant, IGS Gersthofen, Germany. Industrial Park Gersthofen, 2008-2011

Publications

• “Wake the Flies: Transcontinental Filmmaking between Germany and Nigeria,” co-authored by Longgul Dakwom, in Nina Berman, Sara Pugach (eds.) Hidden Transcripts in Germany’s Contact Zones (abstract accepted, in progress).
• “The Potential of Free Play: Adventure Playgrounds through the Lens of Ursula Schulz-Dornburg,” in Getty Research Journal (abstract accepted, in progress)
• “Cell Cultures and German Nationalism: A Visual Investigation,” in Heather Perry, Kirsten Hetrick, and Charles Vannette (eds.), Medical Humanities in German Studies, Bern: Peter Lang (forthcoming).
• “Über Ökosysteme und verkabelte Kartoffeln im Argentinien der 1970er Jahre,” in Michael Rottmann (ed.), Theorie und Praxis der Maschinenkünste im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert: Prozesse – Medien – Kreativität, Berlin: De Gruyter (forthcoming).
• “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, New York: Bloomsbury, 2023, pp. 254-276.
• “Opening the Cage at Hungría 74: Hungarian Artists in Argentina and Their Critical Take on the Dematerialization of Art Objects,” in Laura Petrauskaitė (ed.), Give My Regards to Those You Connect! Cultural Interactions Between South America and Eastern Europe, Vilnius: Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis (AAAV), 2022, pp. 141-168.
• “Wolken der Kybernetik – Metaphern der Interaktivität: Ein Blick auf die Geschichte von Motion Tracking und Virtual Reality,” in Georg Peez (ed.), Mixed Reality und Augmented Reality im Kunstunterricht, Munich: kopaed, 2021, pp. 213-226.
• “Visual Natural Metaphors of Cybernetics in Arts and Popular Culture,” in J.M. Morcillo and C.Y. Robertson von Trotha (eds.), Genealogy of Popular Science: From Ancient Ecphrasis to Virtual Reality, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2020, pp. 441-460.
• “No One Knows What Cybernetics Is! On Communication and Control in Art after 1945,” in Anna Fricke (ed.), The Assembled Human, Berlin: Kerber Verlag and Museum Folkwang Essen, 2019, pp. 319-336
• “Macht’s gut, und danke für den Fisch! Meerestiere als Metaphern der Virtualität: Ein historischer Einblick in das visuelle Erbe der Kybernetik,” in Dokumentation des 31. Film- und Fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums, 4, 2019, pp. 231-249.
• “Von Menschenbildern und Textmaschinen: Was Cyborgs im Film über den Wandel medialer Kommunikation erzählen,” in Visual Past, no. 3.1, 2016, pp. 469-508.

Conference Talks (selection)

• “Wake the Flies: An Activist Approach to Transcontinental Filmmaking between Germany and Nigeria,” German Studies Association (GSA) Annual Conference, panel Hidden Transcripts: Colonial Memory Cultures, Arlington, Virginia. September 2025.
• “Fly Pitch,” Food for Thought Showcase, German Studies Association (GSA) Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia. September 2024.
• “Contesting Cybernetic Futures,” Annual Graduate Student Conference on Speculative Futurities, Past and Present, Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. November 2023.
• “Juan Downey’s Video Journey’s through the Americas,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois (via Zoom due to Covid). March/April 2022.
• “Von Ökosystemen und verkabelten Kartoffeln. Maschinenkünste im Argentinien der 1970er Jahre,” Institut Experimentelle Design- und Medienkulturen (IXDM), Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, FHNW, Basel, Switzerland (via Zoom due to Covid). June 2020.
• “Visual Natural Metaphors of Cybernetics in Arts and Popular Culture,” International Conference on Genealogy of Popular Science: From Ancient Ecphrasis to Virtual Reality, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany. June 2018.

More Information

CURATORIAL PROJECTS, EXHIBITIONS, AND FILM AND MEDIA PRODUCTIONS

• “Wake the Flies. Humanitarian Crisis in Nigeria’s Plateau State” Film Producer. Directed by Longgul Dakwom and Lawunna Yilwada. Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria, 2024-2025
• “Collage and Film” Screening Organizer. In cooperation with the Archive for German Experimental and Avant-Garde Film by Women, University of Paderborn and Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany, 2016.
• “Love Sounds” Curator of Sound Installation. Directed by Masha Tupitsyn. Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany, 2015
• “This is all you are – 540min” Film producer and Exhibition Curator. Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, 2012.
• “Kunst – Erkenntnis – Problem. Möglichkeiten emanzipatorischer Kunst heute” Organizer of Graduate Student Conference. Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, 2012.