Anne Huffschmid is a doctor of cultural sciences, author, and visual creator. As a researcher associated with the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin, she has specialized in topics such as urban studies, violence and social memory, discourse analysis, and visual cultures, with a particular focus on Latin America, especially Mexico. In her doctoral thesis at the University of Dortmund, she explored the Zapatista movement as a discursive insurgency; this work earned him the ADLAF 2002-2003 award and was published in 2004 under the title of Diskursguerilla. In her transdisciplinary research projects, she includes and combines ethnographic and analytical, audiovisual, and curatorial practices. For example, in her study "Memoria en la Megaciudad" she explored the urban topography related to memories disputed in Mexico City and Buenos Aires (see the monograph Risse im Raum) while at the same time considering photography as a means for research. In 2013, she started her current project "Forensic Landscapes" around (against) forensic spaces and agendas in Mexico and other parts of Latin America (Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung, VolkswagenStiftung), an audiovisual exploration of the spatialities produced by terror and forensic intervention. Both the documentary "Persistence" (2019) and the interactive webdocumentary "Forensic Landscapes" (online from 02/2020) are audiovisual narratives as a result of this research. Likewise, Anne is a founding member of the association metroZones, a collective for urban studies specialized in artistic research, with headquarters in Berlin. For more details see www.annehuffschmid.de.

 

Publications

Monographs (selection)

2015. Risse im Raum. Erinnerung, Gewalt und städtisches Leben in Lateinamerika. Wiesbaden: VS Springer.

 

Compilations (selection)

2015. Anne Huffschmid, Wolf-Dieter Vogel, Nana Heidhues y Michael Krämer (coords.): TerrorZones. Gewalt und Gegenwehr in Lateinamerika. Berlin-Hamburg: Assoziation A.

2013. Anne Huffschmid y Kathrin Wildner (coords.): Stadtforschung aus Lateinamerika. Neue urbane Szenarien: Öffentlichkeit – Territorialität – Imaginarios. Bielefeld: transcript.

2013. Markus Hochmüller, Anne Huffschmid, Teresa Orozco Martínez, Stephanie Schütze y Martha Zapata Galindo (coords.): Politik in verflochtenen Räumen / Los espacios entrelazados de lo político. (Festschrift für Marianne Braig). Berlin: edition tranvia.

2012. Anne Huffschmid y Valeria Durán (coords.): Topografias conflictivas: memorias, espacios y ciudades en disputa. Buenos Aires: Nueva Trilce.

2012. Anne Huffschmid, Wolf-Dieter Vogel, Nana Heidhues, Michael Krämer y Christiane Schulte (coords.): NarcoZones. Entgrenzte Märkte und Gewalt in Lateinamerika. Berlin/Hamburg: Assoziation A.

2012. (coord.): Faith is the Place. the Urban Cultures of Global Prayers. Berlin: b_books.

2011. Anne Huffschmid, Alejandro Cerda, Iván Azuara, Stefan Rinke (coords.): Metropolis desbordadas. Poder, memoria y culturas en el espacio urbano. Ciudad de México: Editorial UACM.

2011. Anne Huffschmid, Kristine Vanden Berghe y Robin Lefere (coords.): El EZLN y sus intérpretes: Resonancias zapatistas en la academia y la literatura. Ciudad de México: Editorial UACM.

 

Articles / Chapters (selection)

(In press):  „Los des/bordes de la justicia: Nuevas agencias y procesos forenses a partir de las fosas del presente (mexicano)". En: Silvia Dutrenit Bielous y Octavio Nadal (coords.): Pasado recientes, violencias actuales: antropología forense, cuerpos y memorias en América Latina y España. Ciudad de México: Instituto Mora.

(In press): "Paisajes forenses: sobre cómo mirar, leer y narrar las fosas intervenidas de nuestro tiempo". En: Juan Carlos Ayala y  Maria del Carmen García Aguilar (coords.): Tiempos sombríos. Violencia en el México contemporáneo. Puebla: BUAP.

2019: "Neue forensische Landschaften. Verschwundene, Suchmanöver und die Arbeit der Bilder in Mexiko". En: "Forensik", Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 1. 69-82.

2019: "Santa Muerte as Urban Staging. Notes on the Images and Visibility of a Transgressive Performance". En: Wil Pansters (coord.): La Santa Muerte in Mexico. History, Devotion & Society. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 111-135.

2019: "La antropología forense como saber politizado y transfronterizo: la experiencia argentina y sus resonancias en dos tiempos: el pasado franquista de España y la actualidad de México". En: Patrick Eser, Angela Schrott y Ulrich Winter (coords.): Transiciones democráticas y memoria en el mundo hispánico. Miradas transatlánticas: historia, cultura, política. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 39-64.

2019: "El poder de lo forense. Notas para repensar la antropologia forense, el derecho de los muertos y la necropolítica desde el México actual". En: revista de historia (36) IHNCA-UCA. 61-76.

2019. Anne Huffschmid y Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi: "Uncertain Cities. A Conversation about Public Space, Memory and Urban Resistance". En: Shifting panoramas. Memorias del dialogo cultural entre Berlín y Teheran. Berlin: ifa. 30-34.

2018. "Scratching Space. Memoryscapes, Violence and Everyday life in Mexico City and Buenos Aires“. En: Bianca Freire-Medeiros y Julia O‘Donnell (coords.): Urban Latin America. Images, Words, Flows and the Built Environment. New York: Routledge. 231-25.

2015: "Huesos y humanidad. Antropología forense y su poder constituyente ante la desaparición forzada". En: Athenea digital. Revista de pensamiento e investigación social 15 (3). 

 

Audio-visual works (since 2018)

“Desafiando la Tierra / Defying the Earth” (cortometraje, 37 min., con Jan-Holger Hennies, 2018; subtitulos inglés)

“Persistencia" (largometraje, 54 min., con Jan-Holger Hennies, 2019; subtitulos inglés y alemán)

"Forensic Landscapes" (webdocumental interactivo, con Pablo Martínez Zarate y Jan-Holger Hennies, a partir de febrero de 2020 en: www.forensiclandscapes.com)

 

Research project as a fellow of CALAS (transatlantic tandem with Alfonso Díaz Tovar):

Title: Landscapes of the transition. An exploration of places of terror and the possibilities of their collective transformation

Abstract: The project is situated in a particular situation of crisis, the current escalation of violence in Mexico, overwhelmed in the last decade, and proposes the exploration of emerging knowledge and practices in places and landscapes that have been marked by horror (a clandestine grave, an extermination zone or the scene of a massacre). In our previous works, around social and spatial memory and forensic processes, we have witnessed the constant effort of the families and those affected, in the forensic search itself but also to live with the places of the events, marking them or turning them into incipient sites of remembrance, giving an account of processes of survival and resistance. We propose to explore these new agencies as forms of reconstruction and social recovery, terms that we consider more productive and pertinent than the semantics of reconciliation: we understand them as efforts to rebuild the damaged social fabric, the bonds of sociability and trust between them "affected", as well as the generation of empathy in z with the society not directly involved. From the investigative experiences, five possible scenarios are chosen for this exploration: four distributed in different parts of the Mexican geography (Jalisco, Tijuana, Coahuila, and Veracruz) and one in Colombia as a reference country, corresponding to different forms of extreme violence and various recovery practices by family members, neighbors, civil organizations, forensics, and artists. The methodological approach contemplates the combination of three fieldwork schemes, ranging from "brief ethnography", holding "exchange workshops" with local actors, to carrying out a transdisciplinary residency. The final products include an academic article, a notebook of the ethnographic and visual experience, as well as an audiovisual piece.