Report Nikolaus - September 2010

TRACING THE TRACES. TRACES OF SPACES.
A proposal for several mapping stations in and outside.

Nikolaus Gansterer was in residency in september 2010 and will come back in March 2011 for the final fase of the residency.

The Vienna based artist Nikolaus Gansterer has a deep interest in the links between drawing, thinking and action. While having had an ongoing practice of mappings and diagrams, in his recent project for timelab he will focus on the exploration of expanded drawing.

Is it possible to let the inherent dynamics of space be recorded, mapped and drawn by themselves? Therefore, dynamic things in public space such as trees, wind, insects, etc., are tested to become drawing tools, capturing  unique described movements. 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 street cars brush through the city or even plain papers get buried in the park becoming a test field for microbial activities: All of these experiments offering a very specific insight on the otherwise invisible traces of the urban spaces. Each of the drawing stations distributed here in Gent is its own performative spot at which the observer can follow the process.

On parallel levels Nikolaus Gansterer will develop a series of drawings of inner maps contrasting the public mapping stations. The “lines of thoughts,” that are created through the discovery and experience of the urban space by the artist as foreign to the city, should be transformed and made visible through this process into “lines of things.”
There 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 at the centre of Nikolaus Gansterer’s working period with the project SI at the studios of Les Ballets C de la B with a group of international artists organized by Myriam van Imschoot (Sarma) and  Christine de Smedt (Les Ballets C de la B), also in Gent. (find more infos at: http://si2010.net/).



All the resulting material will be put together into a growing archive and can be seen in the context of a presentation
and a series of performative installations at the festival “The game is up” in March 2011. Then the artist is also planning to compile his findings in a small publication.

http://www.gansterer.org