Nikolaus & Klaus
Gansterer & Speidel

Nikolaus Gansterer is a visual artist, performer and researcher with a special interest in the relationship between drawing, thinking and acting. He studied transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (Austria), where he has been teaching since 2007, and completed his studies at the Jan Van Eyck Academy Academy in Maastricht (Netherlands). He is also the co-founder of the Institute for Transacoustic Research. In addition to drawing, Nikolaus Gansterer's artistic practice includes sculptural installations, performances, video works and long-term research. He considers the processes of thinking and He considers the processes of thinking and drawing to be analogous and experiments with the translatability of phenomena of thought and perception into an artistic environment. Through a consequent reconstitution of methods and tools from different fields - among them experimental modes of notation and translation - he tries to capture the ephemeral character of these phenomena in order to better underline their immanent structures and interconnectivity. Questioning the links between nature and culture, art and philosophy, science and theory, he explores the way in which the act of drawing can become a communication tool, a score or an instruction for action. From 2019 to 2023, the artist is also leading the interdisciplinary project Contingent Agencies, which aims at an experimental mapping of emerging atmospheres, situations and environments.

Klaus Speidel is a philosopher, curator, critic and art theorist. He studied philosophy and art history in Munich (LMU) and Paris (École normale supérieure, Paris X - Nanterre, Paris IV - Sorbonne). From 2003 to 2006, he was awarded an "International Selection" scholarship by the École normale supérieure and from 2006 to 2010, he was awarded a doctoral scholarship by the École normale supérieure and the Sorbonne - Paris IV. In 2013, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at the Sorbonne - Paris IV and defended a thesis on the possibilities and modalities of narration within the same image. From 2015 to 2018, he directs the Lise-Meitner postdoctoral research project entitled "Towards an Experimental Narratology of the Image" at the Lab for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA) at the University of Vienna (Austria). In addition to numerous academic publications on topics related to art, narrative, representation, style, drawing, the digital, and the relationship between words and images, Klaus Speidel has been writing regularly since 2006 on contemporary art as a contributor to international magazines and newspapers such as Spike, artpress, The Art Newspaper, Parnass, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He is also regularly asked to write texts for exhibition catalogs by the Centre Pompidou, the Schirn Kunsthalle, the Frac Lorraine and Franche-Comté, the Mumok or the Belvedere in Vienna. In 2015, he received the AICA France art critic award. He has also curated numerous exhibitions in Germany, Austria and France, and has been invited to participate in the Arte program Philosophie.