Nikolaus Gansterers' work deals with the possibility of the readability of space and is part of a long term research project along the N6 route departing from Brussels towards Paris. In various trips - either by hitch-hiking, by bike but mainly by feet - he was exploring the “Chaussee de Mons” and its various zones of acceleration and deceleration. Interested in how different modes of transportation are influencing thoughts and ways of perceiving the surrounding - he literally started reading the landscape as a book.

On the one hand he meticulously began collecting all the words, numbers and characters he found along selected stretches of the road: neon signs, name plates, advertisements, street names, signposts and little notes were transcribed and retyped into text-images forming the body of “The Stone Road Code”. On the other hand he compiled a huge collection of drawings of found objects, situations and constellations. Thus he developed two contrasting methods of mapping the borders between ego-graphy and geo-graphy.

Gansterers' work is accessible as an open archive consisting of models, books, text-images, drawings, video loops and spoken text - this assemblage of elements builds broken visual narratives of the urban countryside.

Concept and idea: Nikolaus Gansterer

Year: 2007/8

Materials: Models, sound, drawings, text, lamps, sketch books, videoloop, ...

Routing of the models: Guenther Dreger

Exhibited at: Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna in 2008 and Argos - Centre for Media Arts, Brussels in 2009 and performed at the  Beursschouwburg, in the framework of the Kunstenfestival des Arts 2009, Brussels

Support: bmukk, Firefly Projects, Argos/Brussels, Air/Antwerp, Kunstenfestival des Arts, Nadine/The Ever Mass Land/Brussels

The project was published in:

– Bienvenue  - The Newspaper, Orla Barry (Ed.), catalogue, Firefly, Brussels, 2008

– Taking from.Leaving in.Moving on. Mapping Urban Nomadism, Renate Mihatsch (Ed.), Revolver, 2011

– Its about time, Yearbook JVE, Jan van Eyck Academie, 2007, Maastricht. ISBN 978-90-72076-30-4