Objects yet to Become: Nikolaus Gansterer in conversation with Claire Scanlon

ABSTRACT

This article takes the form of an email dialogue between the artist Nikolaus Gansterer and Claire Scanlon – guest-editor of the special issue journal ‘Demands of the Diagram’, in which this article features. The conversation is motivated by five of the most recent Objects yet to Become in Gansterer’s ongoing series of hand-drawn image-text provocations. In the exchange, Scanlon takes up the challenge set by each Objects yet to Become in turn, thereby situating in practice a broader discussion of the diagrammatic as ‘an experimental system of notation and reflection’ in Gansterer’s wider oeuvre. The conversation is punctuated by five, full-page illustrations of each of the chalk-on-blackboard Objects yet to Become, reproduced for the reader from their give-away postcard format.

KEYWORDS:

• Objects yet to Become
• inner forms
• diagramming
• drawing
• installation
• performance
• artistic research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See http://www.gansterer.org/choreo-graphic-figures/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Scanlon

Claire Scanlon is an artist and independent researcher based in Lewes, UK. She lives with Paul Grivell with whom she collaborates as Scanlon&Grivell. From 1990 to 2003 she was visiting lecturer in the Department of Art at Goldsmith's College and from 2003 to 2019 she was senior lecturer in the Creative Industries Department at Northbrook Metropolitan College. She is a member of the University of Brighton Drawing Research Interest Group and has contributed to several events and publications organised by the Drawing Research Network, Loughborough University. In 2019 she completed a practice-based Research Masters, investigating the speculative idea of the imagethought at the intersection of conceptual art diagramming and post-Continental philosophy. Recent publications include ‘Diagramming in the Margins of Philosophy', Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, 3 (1) 2018, and ‘ ’ #3 Becky Beasley in Conversation with Claire Scanlon (edited by Adam Gibbons and Eva Wilson), NERO Publications (2019).

Nikolaus Gansterer

Nikolaus Gansterer is an artist and researcher deeply interested in the links between drawing, thinking and action. His practice is grounded in a trans-medial approach, underpinned by conceptual discourse in the context of performative visualisation. He studied Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and completed his studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy at Maastricht in The Netherlands. He is co-founder of the Institute for Transacoustic Research. Since 2007 he is teaching at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. His fascination with diagrammatic figures has led to his book Drawing a Hypothesis on the ontology of shapes of visualizations and its use in contemporary art and science. From 2014–2018 he was leading the PEEK project Choreo-graphic Figures developing innovative systems of notation between the lines of drawing, writing and choreography. From 2019–2022 he is heading the PEEK project Contingent Agencies on experimental mapping of atmospheres, situations and environments. www.gansterer.org