Proposal Nikolaus - March 2010

TRACING THE TRACES. TRACES OF SPACES.

A proposal for several mapping stations in and outside.

In September 2010 artist Nikolaus Gansterer turns the city of Gent into a generator of tracings and lets them narrate themselves through the medium of expanded drawing.

The “lines of thoughts,” that are created through the discovery and experience of the city by the artist as foreign to the city, should be transformed and made visible through this process into “lines of things.”

Things in public space such as trees, wind, insects, etc., become drawing tools, capturing a described movement. Thus, for example, a writing tool suspended inside hardware inscribes on a paper the wave movement of a canal; drawing instruments held on stretched ropes are pressed onto paper by birds sitting on the ropes; papers attached to streetcars “brush through” the city..., specific invisible traces of the urban dynamic become visible.

Each of the drawing stations distributed here in Gent is its own performative spot at which the observer can follow the process.

All the resulting material will be put together into an archive and can be seen in the context of a presentation and performance, including live drawings. In the end the artist is planning to compile his findings in a small publication.

The performative qualities in the act of drawing is turning the lines of thought into lines in the space. These traces of time and process are also at the center of Nikolaus Gansterer’s two-week working period at the SI performance camp with a group of international artists at organized by Myriam van Imschoot (Sarma) and Christine de Smedt (Les Ballets C de la B. ), also here in Gent.

www.gansterer.org