Ivan Knapp

About

My research focuses on questions of subjectivity at intersections of lens-based and digital media, sculpture, and politics in modern and contemporary art. I was awarded a PhD in the History of Art by University College London in 2021 for my thesis Meme-work: Psychoanalysis and the alt-right which explored memes and other visual phenomena associated with the online ‘alt-right’ movement through psychoanalytic theories of dreams, the group, and male hysteria. I am currently finalizing essays related to my doctoral work, on Mary Kelly’s 1992 installation Gloria Patri and Silvia Kolbowski’s 2018 video That Monster: An Allegory, for publication. My post-doctoral research is toward a monograph on the work of the contemporary American sculptor Rachel Harrison.

Research interests

Modern and contemporary art; politics; psychoanalysis; sculpture; lens-based and digital media; masculinities; internet and post-internet art and visual culture
Teaching and supervision
Modules taught include:

Art and Disruption 1900-today
Photography
Sculpture
Contemporary Art

Qualifications

MA (University of Edinburgh)

MA (Courtauld Institute of Art)

PhD (University College London)

Selected publications

Knapp, I., ‘That Monster Over There’, in Cases of Citations: On Literature in Art, ed. by Chloe Julius and Michael Green, Manchester: Manchester: University Press (forthcoming, 2023).
Knapp, I., ‘On Meme-work’, October, vol. 183, Winter 2023, pp. 3-16.
Knapp, I., ‘Genes, Memes, Dreams’, in INC Reader #15 – Critical Meme Reader, Global Mutations of the Viral Image, ed. by Chloë Arkenbout, Jack Wilson and Daniel de Zeeuw, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures (2021), pp. 330-337.
Knapp, I., ‘A betamale is being beaten’, Object, 21 (2020), pp. 51-69. <http://ojs.lib.ucl.ac.uk/index.php/OBJ/article/view/2069>