Larisa Dryansky is Maîtresse de conférences (Lecturer) in Art History at Sorbonne Université. Her research focuses on the intersections of art, science, and technology in postwar and contemporary art and on technical images (photography, experimental film, video art, digital art). She is currently completing a book that investigates artists’ interest in the concept of antimatter. The aim is to provide a new perspective on the topic of materiality in contemporary art. Ranging from the matiériste painting of Jean Dubuffet to Steina and Woody Vasulka’s explorations of video’s electronic matter, this study is also intended as a contribution to the genealogy of digital materiality.
To complete this project, Larisa Dryansky benefitted from a temporary assignment (délégation) to the CNRS, Centre André Chastel, UMR 8150. This program also enabled her to apply for a residency at the Maison Française d’Oxford. While at the MFO, she intends to further her research on the British conceptual artist John Latham.
Larisa Dryansky’s research has appeared in several journals, edited volumes, and exhibition catalogs internationally. Her first book, Cartophotographies: Du Land Art à l’Art Conceptuel (Éditions de l’INHA / CTHS, 2017), addressed the combined uses of photography and cartography in American art of the 1960s and 1970s. She has co-edited several volumes, including recently Repenser le Médium: Art Contemporain et Cinéma (Éditions de l’INHA / Presses du réel, 2022) and Is Medieval Art Contemporary? / L’Art médiéval est-il contemporain ? (Brill, 2023). From 2014 to 2016, she was Senior Fellow (Conseillère scientifique) in charge of contemporary art programs at the French National Art Institute (INHA). Larisa Dryansky recently earned her Habilitation à diriger des recherches (the highest degree in the French university system) from Sorbonne Université.
Pic: Bubble chamber: Omega production and decay - ©CERN