UPCOMING:
30 - 31 October 2024
DRAWING AFFAIRS
The 2024 EARN Conference "Drawing Affairs" at LUCA School of Arts, Ghent, Belgium is an open invitation to artistic researchers from different disciplines to share knowledge on the state of drawing today, to explore how drawing relates to the world around us and how these relations can be articulated. How to conceptualize drawing’s embodied and material mode of thinking? What’s the position of ‘the drawer’ in relation to other human and non-human agents, technological developments and systems of Artificial Intelligence? Can drawing help us to undraw and undo thinking as usual, and can it act as a bridge to notions of otherness/otherwise? Can we draw other vocabularies to critically disclose and perform the practice of drawing as an epistemic process closely related to thinking, writing, and reading? With contributions by Juan Duque, Ada Güvenir, Marcia Nemer, Rasa Jančiauskaitė, Sophie Durand, Sébastien Conard, The Northern Drawing School , Maija Kuseva and Elina Sunde, Jan Tomson, Amélie de Beauffort, Bart Geerts, Nikolaus Gansterer, Sílvia Simões, Heide Hinrichs and Michael Newman.
RECENT:
22 – 27 October 2024
SHAKEN GROUNDS, SHIFTING SKIES. ART AS A SEISMOGRAPHY OF PRECARIOUS PRESENCES
A symposium and performative screenings at the Videogallery of MAXXI, Museo nationale delle Arti dell XXI secolo, Rome, Italy.
Even before the Anthropocene, disruptive geological forces were compelling artists to reflect on the fragility of existence and the origins of their age. Natural disasters—like the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in southern Italy—have long served as focal points for both scientific inquiry and artistic reflection. These events raised fundamental questions about where to ground reason when the conditions of life could shift so radically. Today, global warming, groundwater extraction, resource mining, clean energy technologies, and waste disposal are all increasing the strain on the Earth’s crust, resulting in human-accelerated earthquakes. This almost incomprehensible, yet undeniable phenomenon highlights the complexity of the ecological crisis, revealing disturbing new entanglements between humanity and the environment.
The artist collective Shaken Grounds revisits the continental margins of southern Italy, exploring the intersections of natural seismic activity and anthropogenic environmental damage through an interwoven mesh of artistic experiments. They recognize that the trembling of the earth, once regarded as one of Gaia’s natural forces, is now being driven by human interference as well. Art, as research and practice, excels in detecting and expressing the changing relationship between humanity and our evolving, technologically influenced, and highly damaged geological environment.
In the course of the symposium, 22-27 October 2024, the artistic research collective and guests will present a combination of talks, screenings and performances that incorporate process-oriented video imagery. Audience talks will offer space for questions about how film, performance art, and geology intertwine within artistic research. See full program here.
A documentary of the symposium will open on November 7, 2024, at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Rome. Shaken Grounds will also be part of the group exhibition "Imagine Climate Dignity: Artistic Collaborations", being held in February 2025 at the Künstlerhaus Vienna. With contributions by Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek, and Lucie Strecker, in collaboration with Valerio Acocella, Arno Böhler, Alexander Damianisch, Helga Franza, Nicolas Freytag, Nicola Fornoni, Victor Jaschke, Werner Moebius, and VestAndPage (Andrea Pagnes & Verena Stenke).
16, 17 & 18 OCTOBER 2024
DRAWING ACROSS x ALONG x BETWEEN UNIVERSITY BORDERS
This conference hosted by the Univertsity of Porto focuses on drawing-based collaborations between art, science and society to tackle artistic, educational and societal challenges. Triggered by the debates surrounding the epistemological impact of drawing activities in science, a shift of focus has also occurred. In the hybrid knowing spaces opened by art-science collaborations, drawing activities are not restricted to visualising, modelling, or understanding. They are a form of agency whose goal is to connect, act and care, a way of staying with the trouble, as Donna Haraway would put it. By addressing drawing as an agency, we consider the links between who is drawing and what is being drawn as part of both the artistic and scientific research process; we focus on how objects and subjects are constituted in their mutual interactions through drawing in order to transform ways of knowing, sensing, feeling and acting in the world. On October 17, in his keynote lecture "Drawing In-between Worlds. Figuring Contingency", Nikolaus Gansterer will provide insights into his current artistic research projects and his practice of situative notation. He explores the fundamental question of how processes of perceiving and thinking can be embodied and translated through drawing. By developing performative tactics in relation to his environment, Gansterer examines not only how the world is visually "captured", but also how the in-between spaces—the transitions and contingencies of perception—can be made tangible. This talk will discuss how drawing practices can operate as an apparatus for navigating, interacting with, and articulating the complexities of the world, particularly in moments of uncertainty and fluidity.
ONGOING:
4 October 2024 - 5 January 2025
COME SING ALONG! ON RAISING OUR VOICES / KOMM SING MIT! VOM ERHEBEN DER STIMME
This group exhibition at Lentos Museum, Linz, Austria is dedicated to the aspect of communal singing from the perspective of contemporary art. The collection brings together around 20 national and international figures for whom singing is a fundamental point of reference within their artistic practice. The works on display explore singing in its various levels of meaning: be it as an expression of personal identity, as an opportunity for intercultural exchange, as a means of (political) protest, or as a community-building practice within contemporary societies. Videos, acoustic and sound installations as well as performative projects, some of which were created especially for the exhibition, are presented within an attractive exhibition architecture in the large hall of the Lentos. The exhibition invites visitors to explore the role of communal singing in the context of contemporary art. Opening on the 3rd of October with artistic work by Michèle Pearson Clark, Clément Cogitore, Ines Doujak, Noam Enbar, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mathilde Ter Heijne, Dejan Kaludjerović, Helmut & Johanna Kandl, Christian Jankowski, Maria Lassnig, Rory Pilgrim, Ayumi Paul, Gerhard Rühm, Henk Schut, Bartolina Xixa.
PAST:
22 - 31 August 2024
OVER.WRITE.ME
The soundart label MAMKA RECORDS & RDECA RAKETA have invited various artists to overwrite, overpaint, manipulate and appropriate their own cover artwork from their third vinyl production "and cannot reach the silence" (Ventil Records & Mamka Records 2021). The exhibition at Sehsaal Vienna, Zentagasse 38 is showcasing art work by Buba Cvoric, Martin Egger, Karin Fisslthaler, Nikolaus Gansterer, Patrick K.-H., Birgit Kellner, Marta Navaridas, Bernd Oppl, Maja Osojnik, Ruin, Leonie Spitzer, Christopher Sturmer and Robin Tomens. Accompanying concerts and listening sessions both provide an overview of the label's previous work and facilitate exchanges and connections, while also introducing future label artists. With concerts by Stefan Voglsinger, Gischt, Angelica Castello, Fugu (Raumschiff Engelmayr, Heimo Wallner), Maiken Beer, Natascha Gangl & Rdeca Raketa (Maja Osojnik & Matija Schellander). On 23.8.2024, 19:30 a conversation between initiator Maja Osojnik and artist Nikolaus Gansterer with a listening session is followed by a concert by Gischt. Check the busy line up!
4 August 2024, 16:00 - 18:00 (event cancelled due to current situation in Middle East)
HOW CAN WE LIVE TOGETHER?
On February 10, 1970, three assassins from a Palestinian terrorist organization attempted to hijack an airplane at Munich-Riem airport. Israeli passenger Arie Katzenstein was killed when he had the presence of mind to throw himself on a hand grenade to protect others. The hijacking was prevented through the efforts of flight captain Uriel Cohen and emergency services.However, ten other people were injured, some of them seriously. Israel’s greatest actress, Hanna Maron, born in Berlin in 1923 and a child star of the theater, film and radio scene of the Weimar Republic, was among them. After three months of hospital treatment, her life was saved, but her left leg had to be amputated. A year later, she was back on stage as Seneca’s Medea with a prosthesis. Far from withdrawing from the public eye or being bitter, from then on, she advocated an end to the occupation and support for autonomous Palestinian statehood. At a time when tolerance and the ability to engage in non-violent discourse are on the decline, this encounter creates a space for joint reflection on how we live together today, on the culture of remembrance and artistic practice. Academic and artistic contributions, including those from philosopher Ofra Rechter and choreographer and dancer May Zarhy, will fuel an open mic session. Artist Nikolaus Gansterer will simultaneously generate an artistic reflection of the discourse by a live drawing performance. Visitors are are kindly invited to share their thoughts in an atmosphere of hospitality and respect. Some guests make prepared contributions. Food and drinks will be provided. Admission free at Schwerer Reiter, in Munich, Germany, part of Tanzwerkstatt Europa 2024.
6 July 2024, 20:00
CONSTRUCTING REALITIES
You can marvel at, admire or worship the world, you can warn against global warming or lament the loss of biodiversity. But you can also rethink it, design it differently, deconstruct it and then remodel it in such a way that confidence can be found again. Parallel to the exhibition WUNDERKAMMER at Künstlerhaus Vienna, FREIES KINO at Stadtkino, has put together a cinema programme that includes artistic worlds of experience, constructions and utopias of realities. Research and art combine to create philosophical thought experiments that manifest themselves in different ways in cinematographic aesthetics and designs that offer free points of reference. Nikolaus Gansterer presents his "Untertagüberbau (2017) in a cinema version with a sound composition by Martin Siewert. This 3-channel video film combines elements of animated film, animated film, live drawing, performance and studio work. The hypnotic flow of images creates a dynamic temporal-spatial structure of poetic effects that dissolves the boundaries between the inner and outer world, between night and day, and exposes deeper layers of perception. "Untertagüberbau" is both model and ruin, non-place and utopia - a drifting terrain full of references and connotations.Come join FREE CINEMA –admission free!
4 May - 23 June, 2024
BY HEARSAY – VOM HÖREN SAGEN
How language-based is reality really? How does meaning come into the word and how does the word come into the world? How can thoughts, feelings and moods be captured artistically? Which signs or languages have to be invented first?
In his multi-layered work, Nikolaus Gansterer explores the ambivalent relationship between drawing, thinking and acting. The artist observes corporeal information cycles between recognizing and naming, hearing and saying, writing and recording, remembering and forgetting, thereby revealing immanent constructions of reality. In recent years, Gansterer has intensively studied the work of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and developed various forms of translation. In his solo exhibition at Galerie Petra Seiser, he provides a current insight into various groups of works and thematizes the subtle processes of sense-making and language play in the form of drawings, wall reliefs and sculptures. Nikolaus Gansterer succeeds in playfully questioning and undermining the apparent boundaries between language and material, art and philosophy through drawing and thinking. Opening of the solo exhibition Vom Hören Sagen / By Hearsay at Galerie Petra Seiser, Schörfling am Attersee on Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 11 am. The artist will be present. The exhibition runs till June 23, 2024.
23 March - 16 June 2024
BETWEEN TIMES AND ARTS
In the Villa Toscana in Gmunden, Austria formally owned by Margarete Stonborough-Wittgenstein, the sister of philosopher Ludwig Wittgensteinsich, people met every summer for creative meetings, exchange or musical and dance performances. In 2024, Villa Toscana will once again become a place of a group exhibition and salons. Three artistic salons are intended to bring the spirit of the turn of the century culture back to life. The "Salon Wittgenstein" (in the spirit of the philosopher), the "Salon Musik" (in the spirit of Paul Wittgenstein) and the "Salon Tanz" (in memory of Grete Wiesenthal). Visual artists from the “world of yesterday” such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Erwin Lang, Charles Lucien Leandre and Moriz Nähr are juxtaposed with contemporary positions on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Contributions by Nikolaus Gansterer, Monika Naranjo Uribe, Sylvia Eckermann, Petra Zechmeister, Gerhard Gutenberger, Claudia Druy show that the examination of the period around 1900 still leads to great art today and provides important insights for our present. On 14th of June artist-performer Nikolaus Gansterer und philosopher-writer Klaus Speidel will do a live performance "Playing with Ludwig" in which they will work with drawings and objects based on a remark by Ludwig Wittgenstein at Villa Toscana. The project is part of the European cultural capital "Salzkammergut 2024" and was initiated by Markus Spiegelfeld and co-curated by Patricia Spiegelfeld and Stefan Kutzenberger.
25 April 2024, 19:00
FIGURES OF CONTINGENCY
Based on images, materials and examples of his work artist and performer Nikolaus Gansterer will introduce in this artist talk into his on-going practice of notation and practices of translation. Gansterer understands the processes of thinking and drawing as analogous. He is thus concerned with the fundamental question of how to translate processes of thought both conscious and subconscious, and explores how the act of drawing can become a tool of communication. In order to approach the materiality of perception Gansterer applies a unique performative grammar, in which the artist’s flow of observations in relation to his environment manifest as captivating live drawings, diagrams and spatial assemblages. He questions how these situative constructions of meaning could be expanded towards a radical sympoiesis: where a line of thought becomes a line on paper, turns into a line in space, and then again a line articulated with the whole body or transforms into an expanded object.
In collaboration with Oslo National Academy of the Arts and in nexus to Gansterers workshop Figuring Notions of Notation 22 April - 26 April. Artist talk at PRAXIS Oslo, Vestre Elvebakke 10, 0182 Oslo, Norway.
6 October 2023, 19:00
AN ATLAS OF SPATIAL FIGURES - PERFORMANCE LECTURE
"An Atlas of Spatial Figures" is the title of a forthcoming book edited by urban anthropologist Ignacio Farías (Berlin), sociologist Silke Steets (Nürnberg), and visual artist Nikolaus Gansterer (Vienna) for the research cluster "Re-Figuration of Spaces", SFB, Berlin.
It addresses methodological questions of how current interdisciplinary research can be designed to ‘figure out spaces’ and analyze the contemporary refiguration of spaces. ‘Figuring out spaces’ is an intellectual and artistic practice of exploring, describing, and visualizing spatial figures that shape how we live, work, and dream. It entails moving between (more concrete) topographic and (more abstract) topological figures of space. It combines conceptual work and methodological reflection with storytelling, visualization, and choreographic translations. The performative book presentation at ICI Berlin in the framework of the symposium "Spatial Figures in the Anthropocene" includes a collection of spatial stories, each drawing on a topographic figure of space as well as sixteen table configurations encompassing drawings, materials, objects and gestures. In this way, four important processes of the refiguration of spaces are illuminated as they are experienced, imagined, and discussed by people, revolving around problems of extimacy, uninhabitability, ferality, and splintering. The lecture performance will be moderated by Hubert Knoblauch.
5 October 2023 - 25 August 2024
BEING MORTAL – STERBLICH SEIN
The group exhibition deals with the most inevitable part of every existance. Juxtaposing works of art that span a cultural-historical arc from the Middle Ages to the present "Being Mortal - Sterblich Sein" traces the deep meaning of death in individula aswell as collective and socio-political contexts. The show at Dom Museum Vienna focuses on intimate, personal approaches as well as the public, political role of dying and the process of facing death. The exhibition includes work by Kurt Absolon, Khaled Barakeh, Max Beckmann, Renate Bertlmann, Margret Bilger, Nomin Bold, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Günter Brus, Maria Bussmann, Lovis Corinth, Ramesch Daha, Stefano della Bella, Alexandre Diop, Otto Dix, Albin Egger-Lienz, Ameh Egwuh, James Ensor, Manfred Erjautz, Olia Fedorova, Hans Fronius, Ernst Fuchs, María Galindo & Danitza Luna, Nikolaus Gansterer, Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro, Giovanni Giuliani, Ferdinand Hodler, Sam Jinks, Alfred Kubin, Maria Lassnig, Sybille Loew, Teresa Margolles, Master of the Zvíkov Lamentation(?), Master of the Albrecht Altar, Kurt Moldovan, ORLAN, Dan Perjovschi, Arnulf Rainer, Johann Elias Ridinger, Christian Rohlfs, Anton Romako, Anja Ronacher, Tina Ruisinger, Walter Schels & Beate Lakotta, Eva Schlegel, Tom Schmelzer, Lena Ilay Schwingshandl, Phil Solomon, Petra Sterry, Timm Ulrichs, Francesca Woodman, Herwig Zens, as well as historic artists whose names have not been handed down. Curated by Johanna Schwanberg and co-curated Klaus Speidel.
Opening 30 September 2023
YOUR HOME’S A WORLD AWAY
Appropriately for the port city of Trieste, the exhibition at MLZ Art Dep is conceived as a nearly Odyssean journey. In its course, one can encounter ignes fatui – the flickering lights that deceive travelers in the middle of the night; one can also hear the sound of a glacier, board a crystal spaceship or experience the reverberation of the inner Earth. The artists who accompany the audience on the journey, however, do not quite resemble the Odysseus of the Homeric epics. Navigating a world of inhuman entities, they do not strive to neutralise them. Rather, they record their eerie voices and, in harmony with them, sketch out itineraries for future sailors. With work by Tania Candiani, Nikolaus Gansterer, Caterina Gobbi, Suzanne Treister, Marcin Zawicki. Curated by Goschka Gawlik & Arkadiusz Półtorak.
9 September 2023, 15:00 - 17:00
ART AS A CATALYST FOR RAW MATERIALS?
Five artists have founded the fictitious mining company Wine and Lithium AG für Zukunftsszenarien in order to investigate the question of petrolithium as a new engine for the energy revolution. In the primordial oceans of Central Europe's largest oil fields in the Weinviertel region of Lower Austria, white gold lies dormant at depths of thousands of metres. The latest technologies are making it increasingly lucrative to extract it, as start-ups in Canada and the US are demonstrating. But what would it mean if this raw material, the symbol of sustainable energy supply, could be extracted from oil wells using minimally invasive methods? What if Austria, with its colonial oil history, became the central European supplier of lithium?
In a play of reality and fiction, the actors design a speculative field research project and public film shooting. The performers not only become observers of the geological, destructive mining processes, but also proactively occupy industrial spaces as authors. From a position of 'embodiment for change', the collective questions how normative and ethical standards for the individual and society are formulated, lived and negotiated in the discourse of energy - under the constant dictates of the financial world. With interventions by Nikolaus Gansterer, Dominika Glogowski, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek, Werner Moebius at Bahnstraße / Feuerland, 2183 Neusiedl an der Zaya, Austria.
22 July 2023, 9:30 - 12:00 (noon)
IMPULSTANZ - LACE#1 SYMPOSIUM: TOPOGRAHIES OF TOUCH
Topographies of Touch is imagined as a collection of events, each of which functions as a metaphorical place where touch can be examined in its context-specific capacities. In the panel "Expanding Fields" moderated by Efva Lilja panel participants Lucie Strecker, Nikolaus Gansterer, Peter Kozek will introduce the audience to their forthcoming artistic research project, "Shaken Grounds: Seismography of Precarious Presences" funded by PEEK/FWF. This project will delve into the intricate interplay between human intervention in the Earth's structure and the resulting shockwaves that reverberate throughout the planet. Throughout the proposal stage, our team of artists, performers, theoreticians, and choreographers, namely Nikolaus Gansterer, Dominika Glogowski, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek, and Lucie Strecker diligently shaped the foundation of this research endeavor. Their combined insights and contributions have paved the way for this future exploration, seeking to unravel the profound interdependencies between our human capacity for sensing and our complex relationship with the planet.
"Shaken Grounds" will research the tremors felt in the ground upon which artists stand today and the significance of developing trainings in sensing "future vibrations" and tools and practices for hypersensitizing the body to cultivate geo-sensory skills by critically reflecting the artists' role as "seismographers". The team will engage in a discussions with the other symposium attendees Jeroen Peters and Eva Meyer-Keller at Volksoper Probebühne, Severingasse 7, 1090 Vienna.
19 July 2023, 16:00 - 20:00
SALON(G)ING WITH BOOKS & FRIENDS
Imagine books loosening up their spines and words drifting off the page into a zone where time multiplies, where bodies grow footnotes and paper skin, savour the taste of language or stick an unruly tongue into the mud digging up fossils and ore and unlikely stories. Attention for the corporeal and material conditions of language is what connects this motley group of artists and writers in their recent publications – and the related collaborations and performance practices. Seeing them together on shelf sparked the desire to bring these books into resonance, activate them in search of unexpected encounters. During two afternoons Alix Eynaudi, Anne Juren, Elisabeth Schäfer, Jack Hauser, Jeroen Peeters, Julien Bruneau, Nikolaus Gansterer and Sabina Holzer will offer a glimpse into their books by way of readings, activations and conversation in a salon setting – all of it punctuated with coffee and cake at Kunstraum EINDORF, Vienna. You’re welcome to spend time with us and imagine the library otherwise. There’s a different program on both afternoons. Free entrance. You can come and go as you like.
18 July 2023, 20:00
TUESDAY @ SECESSION
You are cordially invited to an evening together in the garden of the Vienna Secession with contributions by Hugo Canoilas as well as Nikolaus Gansterer & Arno Böhler, curated by Christian Lübbert.
The event will be starting with the live translecture performance "Tasting-Sensing-Notating-Reflecting-TIME-SPACES" by Nikolaus Gansterer and Arno Boehler. By means of extended drawing, the artist Nikolaus Gansterer will explore the performative simultaneous translation of processes of thought and speech. The philosopher Arno Böhler will read Plato's Timaeus as a voice from the future, presenting us with a cosmogenesis that is still in the making: how many dawns have yet to shine? This question will be developed by Böhler on site in resonance with Gansterer's artistic practice, and will unfold between the two. Signs, gestures and objects become equal actors in a lively table choreography that is filmed live and transmitted directly to the exterior wall of the Secession building. In concordance with the evenings final act the screening of the film Treffen in Guincho Hugo Canoilas will begin with a culinary delight. Admission free!
30 June - 28 August 2023
DIMENSIONEN
Group exhibition on artistic time-space imaginations at SAAG Fabrik with the work of Thomas Eller, Nikolaus Gansterer, Meta Grgurevic, Michael Kienzer, Richard Klammer, Iris Kohlweiss, Helmut Grill, Zenita Komad, Ronald Kodritsch, Franz KOnrad, Hans Kuppelwieser, Julian Palacz, Elisabeth Penker, Roman Pfeffer, Wendelin Pressl, Esther Stocker, Niko Sturm, Tomak. Initiated by Galerie Petra Seiser and curated by Roman Grabner, Bruseum Graz. SAAG Fabrik, Saag 10, Teichtelsberg, Wörthersee, Austria.
31 May + 1 June 2023
PLAYING WITH LUDWIG: BOOK LAUNCH / VIENNA
On the occasion of the release of the book "Playing with Ludwig" by Nikolaus Gansterer and Klaus Speidel they invite for two performative activations:
1. Zerlesung und Tischgespräch / Dereading and table talk
Wednesday 31.5. 2023, 6 p.m.
at AIL (Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab), Otto Wagner-Postsparkasse, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna.
Table Talk: Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel, Ruth Anderwald, Gerhild Steinbuch
2. Umzeichnung und Tischperformance / Undrawing and table game
Thursday 1. 6.2023,7 p.m. at the Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna.
Performance: Gansterer and Speidel invite you to the first Viennese Language Game Lab at the Secession, where they will work with drawings and objects based on a remark by Ludwig Wittgenstein, so that in the end a temporary installation is created according to the method of 'Playing with Ludwig'. Both launches are addmission free!
23 May 2023, 17:00
THREE ECOLOGIES – TANTRIC PHILOSOPHIES
Böhler & Granzer: Félix Guattari; Nikolaus Gansterer: Translecture Live Performance
In the face of environmental destruction and species extinction, the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari demanded in his seminal writing The Three Ecologies (1989) that an ecological revolution must take place on three levels simultaneously: It must transform man's relationship to the environment and social space, but it must also call for a mental revolution of consciousness and thus develop aesthetic resistance to capitalism and ecocide.
The Philosophical Institute of the University of Vienna will hold five lecture units open to the public in the Rote Bar in the lecture series on Three Ecologies in cooperation with the Volkstheater Wien. In these 5 units, philosopher Arno Böhler together with artists Nikolaus Gansterer, Claudia Bosse, Brigitte Wilfing, Susanne Valerie Granzer and media philosopher Shomo Choudhury will analyse artistic practices that are on their way to ecosophies and that defend themselves against the dilution of the term "ecology".
On the 23rd of May Böhler & Granzer will introduce into tantric philosophies while Nikolaus Gansterer will do a simultaneous live drawing translecture performance. Admission is free.
5 April - 23 April 2023
WOR(L)DS DON'T COME EASY
On the 5th of April opening of Nikolaus Gansterers solo exhibition Wor(l)ds Don't Come Easy at Project Room, WIELS - Center for Contemporary Art Brussels, Belgium.
How does language relate to the world and vice versa? Is it possible to grasp seemingly invisible things like thoughts, feelings or atmospheres through art? What signs, lines or languages must be found or invented first?
These and similar questions are at the centre of the solo exhibition Wor(l)ds Don't Come Easy by the Austrian artist Nikolaus Gansterer. Two complementary series of works explore the dynamic interplay between language, perception of the world and the search for corresponding signs, and will be shown for the first time in Belgium at WIELS - Centre for Contemporary Art. Gansterer has spent three years intensively studying the influential work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In exchange with the philosopher Klaus Speidel, drawings, objects, installations and performances were created, which have now been published in a book. In the series of works Philosophical Deviations, Gansterer takes up philosophical thought and translates and expands it with artistic means. In a playful dialogue with Wittgenstein's writings, fundamental themes such as pain and image, colour and imagination, death and the materiality of language come into view. As part of his ongoing research project Contingent Agencies, Gansterer is researching the topic of human and non-human agents. In highly concentrated sessions, Gansterer attempts to notate the entangled interaction of wind, temperature, movement and the perception of a specific atmosphere and mood by means of performative drawings. The exhibition Wor(l)ds Don't Come Easy brings these two groups of works in a complex relationship and provides a fascinating insight into Gansterer’s exploratory view of the world. As part of the exhibition opening on Wednesday 5th of April 2023, the newly published book Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig (Gansterer&Speidel, Editions Dilecta Paris, 2022) will be presented. The writer and dramaturge Jeroen Peeters and the artist Nikolaus Gansterer engage in a conversation and performative activation, Drawing on a Book. How do words, lines, images and the world of the page converse with the multiple languages of artistic practice?
On Friday 7th of April 2023 at 4pm Gansterer will give a guided tour through his exhibition.
21 March 2023, 17:00
THREE ECOLOGIES Böhler & Granzer: Félix Guattari; Nikolaus Gansterer: Atmospheres and Contingent Agencies
In the face of environmental destruction and species extinction, the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari demanded in his seminal writing The Three Ecologies (1989) that an ecological revolution must take place on three levels simultaneously: It must transform man's relationship to the environment and social space, but it must also call for a mental revolution of consciousness and thus develop aesthetic resistance to capitalism and ecocide.
The Philosophical Institute of the University of Vienna will hold five lecture units open to the public in the Rote Bar in the lecture series on Three Ecologies in cooperation with the Volkstheater Wien. In these 5 units, philosopher Arno Böhler together with artists Nikolaus Gansterer, Claudia Bosse, Brigitte Wilfing, Susanne Valerie Granzer and media philosopher Shomo Choudhury will analyse artistic practices that are on their way to ecosophies and that defend themselves against the dilution of the term "ecology".
On the 21st of March Böhler & Granzer will introduce into the work of Félix Guattari and Nikolaus Gansterer will talk about the artistic research project (funded by FWF/ PEEK) Contingent Agencies on the emergence of atmospheres. Admission is free.
21 January - 4 March, 2023
STRANGE WOR(L)DS
Gallery Crone Berlin cordially invites you to the opening of the exhibition 'Strange Wor(l)ds' by Austrian artist Nikolaus Gansterer. On display is a comprehensive series of around forty works in which Gansterer visualizes thoughts, treatises, and theses of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in the most diverse ways. Nikolaus Gansterer belongs to the representatives of the “New Drawing”, who redefine drawing, extend it into space and combine it with performative practices. What distinguishes his work is the content aspect, which he transforms into the formal: in all his works, he refers to natural science, philosophy, literature, poetry, or his own artistic research projects.
In the exhibition 'Strange Wor(l)ds', Gansterer shows a new body of work in which he deals with Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s "Philosophical Investigations", (1953). As it is customary for the artist, he translates Wittgenstein’s thoughts and theses on the complex relation between language and reality into new materilisations using a wide array of techniques, methods, and modes of production. However, the word “translating” must not be misunderstood or interpreted as a servile gesture of adaption. When he “translates,” “transfers,” and “transforms” Wittgenstein’s texts into the pictorial, this is not done in the sense of an illustration. Rather, through the act of drawing, he expands them, interprets them, delimits them, gives them a new dimension, a new aggregate state, a new level of reception.
On Friday the 20th of January 2023 opening of the solo exhibition "Strange Wor(l)ds" presenting new work by Nikolaus Gansterer at Galerie CRONE, Berlin. On Saturday the 21st of January, 16:00 there will be a performative book launch of the brand-new bilingual publication "Playing with Ludwig: Figures of Thinking (Jouer avec Ludwig: Figures de pensée", Éditions Dilecta, Paris by Nikolaus Gansterer & Klaus Speidel in conversation with Jan Philipp Fruehsorge at Galerie CRONE Berlin, Fasanenstrasse 29, Germany.
2 December 2022 - 14 January 14 2023
GEMISCHTER SATZ
Group show with recent work by Carola Dertnig, Nikolaus Gansterer, Daniel Lergon, Oswald Oberhuber, Stefan Reiterer, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Milen Till and Otto Zitko at Galerie Crone Vienna, Getreidemarkt 14 / Eschenbachgasse, Austria.
21 May 2022 - 05 February 2023
RENDEZVOUZ WITH THE COLLECTION: Art from 1960 to today
The presentation of the permanent collection at Landesgalerie Niederösterreich in Krems will display large-scale paintings and sculptural works as well as time-based media, most of which will be on view for the first time. The items will be installed in generously interpreted groups of contextual, stylistic, and formal associations. A extensive group exhibition featuring well-known representatives of Austrian contemporary art but also artistic positions that are little known and yet to be discovered.
Curated by Gerda Ridler and Alexandra Schantl.
3 December 2022
AMTSALON BERLIN
Twenty galleries have joined forces to show a selection of their programs under the roof of the former District Court in Charlottenburg, Amtsalon Berlin, Kantstrasse 79, 10627 Berlin. Galerie Crone presents new work by Ruscha Voormann, Robert Muntean, Volo Bevza, Anthony Goicolea and Tex Rubinowitz, as well as affordable art and and artist editions by Carsten Fock, Emmanuel Bornstein, Erez Israeli, Verena Issel, Milen Till, Sahar Zukerman, Nikolaus Gansterer, Constantin Luser, Tobias Hoffknecht, Carola Dertnig, Daniel Lergon, Tomas Kleiner, Otto Zitko and Rosemarie Trockel.
11 - 26 November 2022
VISIONS OF MEDIA ART: AN DER TAFEL
In the exhibition series Visions of Media Art contemporary artists are invited to react, reflect and be inspired by visionary ideas and attitudes of programmatic artists. In 2022, Oswald Wiener is the key figure for this project. The writer/cyberneticist/language theorist/gastronomer comprehended his work as a synthesis of cognitive science and artistic-philosophical literature. Departing from fragments of linguistic and cybernetic thought experiments, Wiener developed a model of a humankind whose consciousness is altered by cybernetics. For the exhibition “An der Tafel”, artists Ann Cotten / Tada Kanako, Nikolaus Gansterer, Martina Menegon and Jörg Piringer enter into a dialogue with his works. The eCurated by alien productions and Gerda Lampalzer.
On 11.11. 2022 at 19:00 opening of the show with a performance by Ann Cotten and Tada Kanako. On 25. 11. 2022 at 19:00 lecture by Lampalzer/Opperman. The exhibition is part of Vienna Art Week 2022 and takes place at Medienwerkstatt Wien, Neubaugasse 40a, 1070 Viennan, open Mon / Fri / Sat 14:00-18:00.
19 - 25 September, 2022
CONTINGENT AGENCIES: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM
Contingent Agencies is an artistic research project conceived as an inquiry into atmospheres — the subtle, dynamic, complex, and enveloping presences that emerge in given situations for those who inhabit them. More particularly, this project investigates the specific ways in which the agencies of single components of a situation (from light to animals, artifacts to sounds, matter to vegetation, traffic to color …) condition the emergence of these all-over and senseful presences.
In this concluding symposium, a cross-disciplinary group of researchers will address this complex subject matter as well as the specific research methodology developed in this project, based on practices of notation and reflection in diverse media. Participant researchers will be Karen Barad, Arno Boehler, Emma Cocker, Gerhard Dirmoser, Mika Elo, Tim Ingold, Sabina Holzer, Paula Kramer, Lambros Malafouris, Erin Manning, Dieter Mersch, Hans Jörg Rheinberger, and Andreas Spiegl, together with the principal investigators Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga and the head of the Zentrum Fokus Forschung Alexander Damianisch.
Agencies and atmospheres will be inquired from a multi-perspective approach with contributions from artistic research (somatics, choreography, drawing, sound, video, photography, language-based practices) philosophy, archeology, anthropology and physics. The symposium is conceived as an intensive research week that includes micro-workshops, practice sessions, public lectures, panel discussions (both accessible onsite and online), and showings of artifacts. Further information and a detailed program can be found on the project’s website: www.contingentagencies.net This website presents numerous notations and reflections of atmospheric agencies, including detailed information about the processes of their realization as well as the conceptual framework of the whole project. A comprehensive publication is planned for release in 2023.
15 - 18 September 2022
AMTSALON BERLIN
Galerie Crone is presenting work by Jozéf Jarema, Darrel Ellis and Nikolaus Gansterer at the 3rd gallery pop-up show at the former courthouse in Berlin Charlottenburg at Amtsalon, Room 4, Kantstrasse 79.
6 - 11 September 2022
PARALLEL: BRIGITTE KOWANZ ETC
The art fair PARALLEL Vienna presents a special group show tp pay homage to the Austrian artist Brigitte Kowanz (1957-2022) and to mark the tenth anniversary of the fair. PARALLEL Vienna is a hybrid between art fair, exhibition platform and artist studio. The group exhibition is curated by Adrian Kowanz & Stefan Bidner.
12 - 31 August 2022
NIKOLAUS GANSTERER: SUMMER SOLO EXHIBITION at GALERIE PETRA SEISER
In his multi-layered work, Nikolaus Gansterer explores the dynamic field between drawing, thinking and action. The artist observes fundamental cycles of perception between recognising and naming, recording and remembering, thereby revealing immanent network structures. In his solo exhibition at Galerie Petra Seiser at Attersee, he provides a current insight into various groups of works and addresses the subtle processes of sense-making in form of drawings and sculptures. Nikolaus Gansterer succeeds in playfully questioning the apparent boundaries between language and material, art and philosophy. Opening of the exhibition on Friday 12 August 2022 at 19:00. The artist will be present. Live concert by Ulrich Drechsler in the exhibition on Friday 19 August at 19:00.
June 2022
WAYS INTO KNOWING: DIAGRAMMATIC ENTANGLEMENTS
In the contribution to the new editorial of Arts Cabinet 'Ways into Knowing', artist Nikolaus Gansterer and curator, writer Fatoş Üstek engage in a conversation on employing diagramming as an artistic method focussing on the trilogy of works that punctuate Gansterer’s practice spanning the last decade. Together, they investigate the expansive force of diagrammes in instigating relational networks amongst seemingly disparate areas of knowledge formation, and how this investigation manifests itself as artistic modes of production. The conversation between Nikolaus Gansterer & Fatoş Üstek on Diagrammatic Entanglements is presented on a full transcript and a 3-parts film.
The first iteration of 'Ways into Knowing' offers a base to reflect upon and document the oscillatory nature of research, with a focus on uncertainty and not-knowing as starting conditions for processes of inquiry. Editorial Guest Contributors: Virginia Chihota // A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh // Nikolaus Gansterer & Fatos Üstek // KUNCI Study Forum & Collective: Acong, a.k.a Onyenho & Khoiril Maqin // mother tongues // Hans Rosenström. Moderator of the final symposium is Nida Ghouse. Rebecca Hill will contribute as post editorial guest writer.
20 May 2022, 17:00-22:00
LANGE NACHT DER FORSCHUNG / LONG NIGHT OF RESEARCH 2022
In the course of Lange Nacht der Forschung (The Long Night of Sciences) which is the largest science and research event in the German-speaking world, four current research projects hosted by the University of Applied Arts Vienna are presented: Experiencing materials: 'Greenwashed Concrete' by Eckhard + Weber; 'Gemeinsam durch den Taumel' by Anderwald+Grond; and experiencing atmospheres 'Contingent Agencies' by Nikolaus Gansterer and 'Toxic Temple' by Kilian Jörg + Anna Lerchbaumer. At AIL - Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab with performances, presentations, a book launch and round table discussions moderated by Alexander Daminaisch Alexandra Graupner and Elisabeth Falkensteiner and guests.
22 March 2022, 20:00
MOVING IMAGES AND STATIC SOUNDS
Together with the musician and composer Martin Siewert a multifacet film programme is presented at Stadtkino / Künstlerhaus Vienna showcasing his extensive work in film and sound. The programme includes music videos, compositions for film and moving image installations by Martin Siewert in collaboration with, among others: Siegrun Appelt, Artificial Horizon & Milli Bitterli, Martin Brandlmayr, Khadija von Zinneburg Carroll, Angela Christlieb, Gustav Deutsch, Nikolaus Gansterer, Michaela Grill, Simona Koch, Dieter Kovačič, Dariusz Kowalski, Annja Krautgasser (nja), Jan Machacek, John Norman, Frans Poelstra, Billy Roisz, Anat Stainberg, Robert Steijn, Michael Thiele, Yosi Wanunu & Toxic Dreams. Curated by Martina Tritthart and Holger Lang / Freies Kino. Free admission.
15 March 2022 - 09 April 2022
UNDERSTANDING - ART & RESEARCH
The University of Applied Arts Vienna presents exemplary approaches to its artistic research under the title UNDERSTANDING – ART & RESEARCH, it is about understanding as the very creative impulse. Through examples from research and teaching, science and art the transformation of society can be viewed, examined, sensed, discussed and experienced. Curated by Gerald Bast, Alexander Damianisch and Barbara Putz-Plecko. On 14th of March 2022, at 18:00 official opening of the show at UM Gallery, UMPRUM, nám. Jana Palacha 80, Prague 1, Czech Republic.
3 March 2022
CONTINGENT AGENCIES – "THE COLLINGWOOD YARDS THING" at LIQUID ARCHITECTURE, NARRM/MELBOURNE
Contingent Agencies is an artistic research project initiated by Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga to inquire into a subject matter that is denominated with various terms as moods, places, environments or atmospheres. Each situation is endowed with a particular atmosphere. Each circumstance brings about a specific environment: a significant but non-objectified, precise but vague, ephemeral and enveloping presence. This project aims at developing specific practices of notation and reflection that allow for a more comprehensive understanding of how the agencies enable the emergence of these kind of presences. After an internal workshop, where practices of notation and reflection were applied in ressonance with the atmosphere of Collingwood Yards by a group of invited researchers the findings of the workshop will be dialogically shared with an open audience.
6-7pm public presentations by Nikolaus Gansterer (Contingent Agencies) featuring Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Aarti Jadu, Debris Facility, Helen Grogan, Rosie Isaac, Zoe Scoglio and Joel Stern. The event takes place in the framework of Mono-Poly March 2022 curated by Liquid Architecture and Composite, at Collingwood Yards, 35 Johnston, Collingwood, Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung, Narrm, VIC 3066, Australia.
12 February 2022, 15:30 (CET)
FINISSAGE WITH PERFORMANCE: FIGURES DE PENSÉE. DENKBEWEGUNGEN
On the penultimate day of the exhibition "Figures de pensée / Denkbewegungen" Les Tanneries organizes a hybrid lecture-performance, where the philosopher Klaus Speidel and I will be realizing a new table constellation for the series Playing Games with Ludwig. Nikolaus Gansterer will be joining from Melbourne, while Klaus Speidel will be present in the space with the visitors in Les Tanneries, Amilly, France. Playing Games with Ludwig is an ongoing series of game-performances in which the philosopher Klaus Speidel and the artist Nikolaus Gansterer discuss themes like games and gaming or the value of indeterminacy in concepts while sitting face to face on a blackboard-table surrounded by objects to be used as the conversation develops. Each conversation takes as its starting point a specific paragraph from Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings.
05 - 09 October 2021
Contingent Agencies is an artistic research project initiated by Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga conceived as an inquiry into the subtle, dynamic, complex, and enveloping presences that emerge in given situations for those who inhabit them. These presences are denominated with various terms such as “Stimmungen", “moods", or even “places"; in this project we favor the words “atmospheres” and “environments". More particularly, this project investigates the specific ways in which the actualization of the agencies of single components of a situation (from light to animals, from artifacts to sounds, from matter to vegetation,...) conditions the emergence of these comprehensive and senseful presences. Accordingly, atmospheres are considered as coherent networks of phenomena that emerge due to a systemically organized set of intertwined agencies: the capacity of each component of a given situation to transform the presence of the other components and the arising environment.
The event "Notations, Reflection & Strategies of Display" is structured in three parts. An internal workshop (5 – 7 October); a public dialogue (8 October, 5 pm) and an exploratory installation (9 October, 11 am – 8 pm). In the public dialogue, the findings of the workshop will be dialogically shared with an open audience. In the exploratory installation, artefacts of notation and reflection will be publicly displayed in order to further incentivize dialogues and open-ended processes of reflection. With Alex Arteaga, Emma Cocker, Karmen Franinović, Nikolaus Gansterer, Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch, Frida Robles, Charlotta Ruth at APL - Angewandte Performance Laboratory, (which is situated at former P.S.K.), Georg-Coch-Platz 2, A-1010 Vienna, Austria.
25 Sept 2021 - 13 February 2022
FIGURES DE PENSÉE. DENKBEWEGUNGEN
“I can easily imagine someone always doubting before he opened his front door whether an abyss did not yawn behind it, and making sure about it before he went through the door.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations, §84).
Since Antiquity, philosophers incessantly imagine strange scenarios to serve their arguments. Often, their “thought experiments” take us to worlds very different from ours, with other social, ethical or natural laws. Rather than full-fledged literary texts, these philosophical scenes, however, remain sketches for the most part, as they are detailed just enough to make philosophical claims plausible. But what happens if we try to turn one of these pure "thought-objects", merely designed for the imagination, into real things or if we try to perform one of the scenes described by a philosopher?
Questions like these stand at the beginning of the exhibition imagined by the artist and performer Nikolaus Gansterer together with the curator and theorist Klaus Speidel. Together Gansterer and Speidel playfully develop different figurations to put to the test the theoretical work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Their interest in figures of thought is an extension of the research that each of them has developed in the past through different mediums. The figures they develop are about translation and transfer, about how thoughts and words become images and objects and vice versa. The new works will be contextualised with works by Gansterer on the shapes of diagrammatic visualizations and patterns of spatial interactions through performative notation. At Centre d'art contemporain - Les Tanneries, in Amilly, France.
23 Nov 2021 - 15 Jan 2022
40 YEARS FOTOGALERIE VIENNA
Looking back - Looking around - Looking to the future: A 40 year anniversary exhibition at Fotogalerie Vienna, Austria. Participating artists: Thomas Albdorf, Sabine Bitter, Helmut Weber, Robert Bodnar, Eva Choung-Fux, Philipp Fleischmann, Thomas Freiler, Nikolaus Gansterer, G.R.A.M., Birgit Graschopf, Mary Gold, Rosa John, Alek Kawka, Friedl Kubelka, Gašper Kunšič, Robert F. Hammerstiel, Claudia Larcher, Simon Lehner, Anja Manfredi, Julian Lee-Harather, Roberta Lima, Sissa Micheli, Michael Michlmayr, Andreas Müller, Michaela Moscouw, Hyeji Nam, Olena Newkryta, Anja Nowak, Klaus Pamminger, Hermes Payrhuber, PRINZGAU/podgorschek, Wolfgang Reichmann, Gabriele Rothemann, Bastian Schwind, Eva Schlegel, Laura Sperl, Simona Reisch, Patrick Topitschnig, Julian Turner, Christina Werner, Robert Zahornicky. Opening on Monday, 22 November 2021, 7 p.m.
24 June 2021 - 2 January 2022
SEFO TRIENNIAL, UNIVERSUM
The main exhibition of the SEFO 2021 Triennial - Universum at Olomouc Museum of Modern Art, Czech Republic, presents a group of artists from the broader Central European region whose work repeatedly addresses the issues of the determination, naming, composition, organisation and meaning of the elements making up the world we inhabit. Rather than by topic or approach and definitely not by the medium in which they work, these individuals are united by a way of thinking, their use of basic definitions and polarities that we employ to help us on the path to understanding. The human world is paradoxical: the more it longs for unity and wholeness, the more it creates dividing lines and barriers. The tension between what is inside and what we consider our own and what is outside and belongs to everyone, so to speak, is considerable and also critical for our own self-perception.The oscillation around this ever-changing focus then includes artists trying to recreate the moment of experience with what is, what serves for direct touch or view. At the same time, they transcend the boundaries of the real, or the virtual, the possible, and show the great importance of storytelling, the story we share and the language we use to relate it. At the same time, they demonstrate the most important thing, that facts are established on the basis of a common culture, not the other way around. And that art permanently and constantly reveals what it means to create reality. In this constellation, the “universum” is a pliable structure. It is not complete or all-embracing. Its skeleton is human experience with the world – non-factual, complex and variable. What we share is a system of fixed points, and what makes it exceptional is what lies in between.
With contributions by Adam Albert, Lubomír Axmann, Uršula Berlot-Pompe, Nikolaus Gansterer, Agata Gertschen, Jana Gunstheimer, Jaroslav Grulkowski, Adam Kokesch, Gábor Koós, Áron Kútvölgyi-Szabó, Joanna Leszczyńská, Jan Pamułas, Karol Pomykała, Ondřej Přibyl, Zdeněk Trs. Curated by Barbora Kundračíková.
22 Nov 2021
ZWISCHENZEICH(N)EN
Nikolaus Gansterer will give an artist talk on expanded drawing at the class for conceptual painting by Prof. Katharina Hinsberg at Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar (HBKsaar), Germany. Using images, materials and examples from his work, Nikolaus Gansterer will introduce his ongoing practices of notation. Gansterer understands the processes of thinking and drawing as synonymous. He therefore addresses the fundamental question of how thought processes can be translated and explores how the act of drawing can become a tool of communication.