Nikolaus Gansterer studied anthropology, sculpture and transmedia arts in Vienna, Austria and completed his studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, The Netherlands. He is co-founder of the Institute for Transacoustic Research and board member of the Applied Performance Laboratory in Vienna. He is teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where he was guest professor 2016–2019. He is internationally active in performances, exhibitions and lecturing.

Nikolaus Gansterer is deeply interested in the relational field between drawing, thinking and action. His practice is grounded in a trans-medial approach, underpinned by conceptual discourse in the context of performative visualization. Across forms of installations and performances he traces the translatability of phenomena of perception into an artistic environment. In his transmedial work, he focuses on mapping ephemeral and emergent processes unfolding their immanent structures of interconnectedness, questioning the imaginary threshold between nature and culture, art and philosophy.

Gansterer’s fascination with the complex character of diagrammatic configurations resulted in his book “Drawing a Hypothesis – Figures of Thought” (Springer, 2011) on the ontology of shapes of visualizations and its use in contemporary art and science. From 2014–2018 Gansterer was leading the inter-disciplinary artistic research project Choreo-graphic Figure: Deviations from the Lines (PEEK) developing innovative systems of notation between the lines of drawing, writing and choreography. 2019–2023 Gansterer is leading key researcher of Contingent Agencies an interdisciplinary research project on experimental forms of notating and reflecting atmospheres, situations and environments.

http://www.gansterer.org

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