Stockholm university
Denna sida på svenska

Kristoffer NohedenAssociate Professor

About me

Reader in Cinema Studies and Research Fellow in the Department of Media Studies.

Research

My interdisciplinary research is primarily devoted to surrealism in film, art, and literature, around themes including esotericism, ecocriticism, and documentary practices. I have also worked extensively on artists Alan Glass and Leonora Carrington.

Building on my research I have collaborated with several museums, including as co-curator of the exhibitions Alan Glass: Sorprendente hallazgo for Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, October 2024 to February 2025, and Surrealism and Film for Mjellby Art Museum, May to August 2021.

Research projects

Documentary Surrealism

This project investigates the intersection of surrealism and documentary across media and art forms. It argues that documentary strategies are central for international surrealism, including both historic and contemporary practice.

Research

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • "The Universe Is a Quiet Catastrophe": Alan Glass's Late Assemblages

    2024. Kristoffer Noheden. International Journal of Surrealism 1 (2), 1-24

    Article

    This article examines a selection of the assemblage artist Alan Glass's art made during the COVID-19 pandemic. In either direct or oblique ways, many of Glass's works from 2020 to 2022 allude to the pandemic and other ongoing crises including war and ecological catastrophe. Drawing on archival material and interviews with the artist, the article emphasizes the significance of poetry and esotericism for his art, and interprets the works under consideration as examples of gnosopoetics, or the pursuit of higher knowledge and radical transformation through surrealist art. After outlining Glass's trajectory from drawing and painting to the medium of assemblage and situating his art in the context of Surrealism in Canada, France, and Mexico, the author proceeds to a thematic discussion of Glass's pandemic-era works. These alternate between, on the one hand, depicting a broken world and thematizing death, and, on the other, calling forth possibilities of transformation through a surrealist poetics of the ascendant sign as well as imaginary forms of communication.

    Read more about "The Universe Is a Quiet Catastrophe"

  • The Wild Medium: Anarchism and Surrealist Cinema

    2024. Kristoffer Noheden. Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies 2024 (1), 45-86

    Article
    Read more about The Wild Medium

Show all publications by Kristoffer Noheden at Stockholm University

Edit the profile