UPCOMING:
3 JUNE 2025, 19:30
OPEN CIRCLES – A CONVERSATION ABOUT ARTISTIC RESEARCH AND SUSTAINABILITY
How can art and research work together to open up new perspectives on sustainability? In this live dialogue at MQ Summer Stage, Main Courtyard, Vienna we will explore the question of what constitutes artistic research: Who shapes it? What does it need? What topics does it address? And how can it influence our perception? Especially with regard to ecological challenges, art opens up new ways of thinking and feeling. It also helps us to develop a sensitivity for the non-human – for plants, animals or other life forms. Current threats not only lead to an environmental crisis, but also to a crisis of perception: the emotional connection to nature is weakening.
The artistic researchers Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond, Ernst Logar, Jeanette Müller and Paul Divjak as well as Christoph Weber present their perspectives in this dialogue. Together with members of the Shaken Grounds research project, they will provide insights into their methods – from sounds and words to objects, scents and performative interventions.
At the end, we invite you to a film screening of ‘Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies’. The film by Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Victor Jaschke, Peter Kozek, Werner Moebius und Lucie Strecker in cooperation with Arno Böhler, Nicolas Freytag, und Sylvia Scheidl impressively shows how our environment resonates in our bodies and documents art-based seismographic research. Moderation: Alexander Damianisch, University of Applied Arts Vienna. Open Circles is an event organised in cooperation with the Support Art and Research of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, free entry.
RECENT:
9 May 2025, 9:30
PRESENTATION & BOOK LAUNCH: CONTINGENT AGENCIES – INQUIRING INTO THE EMERGENCE OF ATMOSPHERES at SAR CONFERENCE in PORTO on RESONANCE
How do atmospheres—those subtle, fleeting affective presences that co-shape our perception of the world—come into being? What forces enable and constrain their appearance? How to research these complex processes in a non-reductive way? Maybe by entering in a state of resonance?
Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga presentation at the 16th International Conference on Artistic Research at the University of Porto, Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal of the artistic research project Contingent Agencies. This inquiry explores the dynamic relationship between human and non-human agencies as enabling conditions for the emergence of atmospheres. This cross-disciplinary investigation is conducted through multimodal practices of notation, reflection, showing, and sharing realized in diverse media within different theoretical frameworks such as phenomenology, enactivism, and new materialism. The present book published by Hatje Cantz Berlin, complemented by an extensive online archive, features multiple research artifacts – including texts, drawings, photo series, diagrams, sound recordings, and video stills – as an invitation for a wider community to join the inquiry into more than human agencies. A group of internationally renowned authors explores the emergence of atmospheres through diverse perspectives, including art, artistic research, western and non-western philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and quantum physics. With contributions by Alex Arteaga, Karen Barad, Arno Boehler, Emma Cocker, Alexander Damianisch, Gerhard Dirmoser, Debris Facility, Mika Elo, Nikolaus Gansterer, Rosie Isaac, Sabina Holzer, Tim Ingold, Paula Kramer, Erin Manning, Dieter Mersch, Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Leena Rouhiainen, Andreas Spiegl. Edited by Alex Arteaga and Nikolaus Gansterer.
7 April 2025, 18:30
BOOK LAUNCH: CONTINGENT AGENCIES – INQUIRING INTO THE EMERGENCE OF ATMOSPHERES
Nikolaus Gansterer, Alex Arteaga in conversation with invited authors Arno Boehler, Alexander Damianisch, Gerhard Dirmoser, Sabina Holzer, Andreas Spiegl at the University of Applied Arts Vienna,
at the APL Angewandte Performance Laboratory, Expositur Georg-Coch-Platz (former PostSparKasse), mezzanine floor, Georg‐Coch‐Platz 2, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Contingent Agencies, an artistic research project initiated by Alex Arteaga and Nikolaus Gansterer, explores the dynamic relationship between human and non-human agencies as enabling conditions for the emergence of atmospheres. This cross-disciplinary investigation is conducted through multimodal practices of notation, reflection, showing, and sharing realized in diverse media within different theoretical frameworks such as phenomenology, enactivism, and new materialism. The present book published by Hatje Cantz Berlin, complemented by an extensive online archive, features multiple research artifacts – including texts, drawings, photo series, diagrams, sound recordings, and video stills – as an invitation for a wider community to join the inquiry into more than human agencies. A group of internationally renowned authors explores the emergence of atmospheres through diverse perspectives, including art, artistic research, western and non-western philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and quantum physics. With contributions by Alex Arteaga, Karen Barad, Arno Boehler, Emma Cocker, Alexander Damianisch, Gerhard Dirmoser, Debris Facility, Mika Elo, Nikolaus Gansterer, Rosie Isaac, Sabina Holzer, Tim Ingold, Paula Kramer, Erin Manning, Dieter Mersch, Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Leena Rouhiainen, Andreas Spiegl. Edited by Alex Arteaga and Nikolaus Gansterer.
27 March, 2025 14:00 – 18:00
SYMPOSIUM: WHAT IS THE LANDSCAPE YOU’RE WORKING IN?
The setting of the defensio exhibition Conceptual Landscapes: Readership in the Expanded Field by Jeroen Peeters hosts a programme of lectures, performances and video essays at De Kooi, PXL MAD, Hasselt, Belgium. In his lecture „Bandergewilden“, Jeroen Peeters discusses the reading of practices. How do artists or writers read their own work as it emerges in the studio when things are in constant flux and not yet public? How can one recognize, acknowledge, document, publish those variegated modes of attention? What is the landscape you’re working in?
In response to this question, Vlad Ionescu, Kate Briggs, Sher Doruff, Nikolaus Gansterer, Stefanie Wenner and Nadia Sels will introduce an aspect of their work and explore questions of experimental writing, translation, anamnesis, fabulation, notation and other practices that expand our sense of reader with following contributions. Vlad Ionescu: Anamnesis of Reading (Practices and Places); Kate Briggs: On book spaces, page spaces, fictional spaces, and living spaces. Sher Doruff, Stories Telling; Nikolaus Gansterer: Contingent Agencies – Inquiring into the Emergence of Atmospheres. Stefanie Wenner: Sottobosco; Nadia Sels: Desk Horse. Jeroen Peeters will conclude the afternoon with A Table, a performance-reading of Francis Ponge’s La table (1967-73), the last of his notebook works, dedicated to the table that was his immediate work environment.
ONGOING:
28 February – 9 June 2025
CLIMATE DIGNITY
“Climate Dignity” encompasses the idea that all people have the right to live in a world where their health, freedom, and livelihoods are not threatened by climate change. In the spirit of climate justice, this applies especially to those individuals, communities, and countries most affected or likely to be affected by climate change, who are thus in particular need of protection. At the same time, “Climate Dignity” emphasizes that the consequences of human-induced climate change and the associated loss of biodiversity not only threaten human dignity but also endanger nature. The concept underlying “Climate Dignity” places the more-than-human relationships at its core, highlighting the interdependence of humans and nature: to violate the dignity of nature is to harm human dignity. This group exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Vienna frames “Climate Dignity” as a call to action. The research conducted by participating artists and the resulting works aim to equip us all with knowledge and courage to resist the ongoing destruction of our world.
Artists: Nicoleta Auersperg, Anca Benera, Sabine Bitter, Pavel Brăila, Ahmet Civelek, Luiza Crosman, Andreas Duscha, Arnold Estefán, Shaken Grounds Collective (Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Victor Jaschke, Peter Kozek, Werner Moebius, Lucie Strecker in collaboration with VestAndPage), Christoph Höschele, Nona Inescu, Selbi Jumayeva, Mathias Kessler, Kinga Kiełczyńska, Ada Kobusiewicz, Wolfgang Lehrner, Ernst Logar, Alberto Lomas, Huda Lutfi, Dominik Mayer, Jelena Micić, Radenko Milak, Mladen Miljanović, Mirko Nikolić, Bianca Pedrina, Oliver Ressler, Claudia Schioppa, Leo Trotsenko, Pokret Tvrđava, Alisa Verbina, Javier Viana, Olha Vinichenko, Kay Walkowiak, Christoph Weber, Helmut Weber. A group exhibition curated by Barbara Höller and Simon Mraz.
A joint project by the Section for International Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Austrian Cultural Forums, and the Künstlerhaus Association.
On April 11, 2025, 16:00–19:00 Shaken Grounds is inviting to a mini symposium with short lectures, performance, and audience discussion on the recording of geological, social, and psychological tremors with Arno Böhler (philosopher), Daniel Brandlechner (literary scholar), Nikolaus Gansterer (artist), Mariella Greil (choreographer and dancer), Victor Jaschke (filmmaker), Peter Kozek (artist), and Lucie Strecker (artist).
8 January – 12 July, 2025
THE THIRD PERSPECTIVE
The Japanese novelist Jun’ichirō Tanizaki wrote his essay on aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows, in 1933. It’s an ode to the mystery of atmosphere and the beauty of the subtle; a loose amalgam of thoughts on Japanese interiors and his reflections on darkness. The artworks in this exhibition aim to embody Tanizaki’s ideas of nuance. They explore subtlety, atmosphere, the ephemeral, the shadow, the misty, the clouded, and aim to examine our contemporary existence through shades of meaning.
The show at The Merode, Brussels takes its name from Afrika Brooke’s recent book, The Third Perspective, which asks us to take a look at self-censorship in the age of cancel culture and online intolerance. It’s a call for mindful expression in an era of binary reduction. Instead of black and white, this is an exhibition about shades, gradation, abstraction and reduction.
With works by Gioele Amaro, Uri Aran, Marcel Berlanger, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet, Mathias Bitzer, Christiane Blattmann, Paloma Bosquê, Varda Caivano, Tony Cokes, Paul Czerlitzki, Edith Dekyndt, TR Ericsson, Gritli Faulhaber, Philipp Fleischmann, Nikolaus Gansterer, Negar Ghiamat, Stefan Guggisberg, Lothar Hempel, Gregor Hildebrandt, Cameron Jamie, Nicolas Jasmin, Nick Jenson, Thomas Jeppe, Patrick H Jones, Dorota Jurczak, Mike Kelley, Renato Leotta, Alex Macedo, Martin Margiela, Paul McDevitt, Danielle McKinney, Elisabeth Molin, Sofie Muller, Zoran Music, Cecilie Norgaard, Bernd Oppl, Oliver Osborne, Hamish Pearch, Iseult Perrault, Charlotte Posenenske, Francis Ruyter, Fabrice Samyn, Sam Samore, Olve Sande, Christian Schoeler, Maaike Schoorel, Peter Simpson, Stephen Skidmore, Henk Somers, Reno Suanez, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pierre Tal Coat, Ryuji Tanaka, Ulrike Theusner, J. Parker Valentine, Bernard Villers, Jorinde Voigt, Maja Vukoje, James White, Cathy Wilkes, Letha Wilson, Edin Zenun. Curated by Francesca Gavin.