Hello, I am Günter Gassner. I am an interdisciplinary urban researcher, spatial practitioner, and writer working at the intersection of politics and design. My work engages critical spatial theory, the politics of aesthetics, antifascism and militant queer activism, political theatre, as well as visual historiography and creative writing.
Theatre
Deleuze
Antifacism
Heritage
Skyline
Politics
Writing
Fragmentation
Benjamin
Critical Theory
Commodification
Beauty
Activism
Drawing
Queer
Spatial practices
Spatial imaginaries
Racism
Fascism
Aesthetics
I trained as an architect at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and worked in Vienna, Barcelona, and London as an architect and urban designer before completing a PhD in Critical Urban Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). I have taught at several universities, including Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), LSE, and Cardiff University, where I served as Associate Professor in Politics and Design. I am currently based in Berlin, an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University, and teach urban design at Berlin International University of Applied Sciences. I am also affiliated with TU Berlin and the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1265 “Refiguration of Spaces”.
My research has been published in journals such as GeoHumanities, Cultural Geographies, sub\urban, The Sociological Review, and Urban Geography, as well as in edited volumes including Aesthetics and the City and The Detective of Modernity. I am the author of Ruined Skylines, a monograph examining the urban skyline as a space for radical politics. I am currently working on a new book project titled Antifa Urbanism, which examines militant activism as liberatory urban praxis.
The post-race city: Borders, freedom and imagination
Drawing a 'revolutionary we': Queer antifascist lines for universal liberation
Revolutionärer Antifaschismus als Stadtplan: Gewalträume, Freiräume und Traumräume
Aestheticizing the beautiful city: Democratic politics and design review
Avenue of atrocities
Spiral movement: Writing with fascism and urban violence
Materiality, race and speculative aesthetics
Fragments of cityscapes
Drawing as an ethico-political practice
Ruined skylines: Aesthetics, politics and London's towering cityscape
Thinking against heritage: Speculative development and emancipatory politics in the City of London
Wrecking London's skyline? A political critique of how the City is viewed
A religious office tower? Virgin Mary's outspreak cloak in the City of London
Visual consequences of the plan: Managing London's changing skyline
Skylines and the 'whole' city
Elevations, icons and lines: The city abstracted through is skylines
Alongside my academic work, I collaborate on creative and research projects with institutions and collectives including the Walter Benjamin Archive (Academy of the Arts Berlin), Museum Charlottenburg–Wilmersdorf, POLIGONAL–Office for Urban Communication, Common Wealth Theatre, and the Brecht Haus. These collaborations explore collective memory, queer antifascist theatre, anti-Oedipal geographies, and the intersections of spatial practice and critical theory in the work of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lācis.
I regularly present my work internationally and am always interested in exchange, dialogue, and collaboration.
Drawing the queer antifascist city
Micro-antifascism and the politics of feeling
W. Benjamin walks and writes in bed through Berlin
Antifascism as a liberatory spatial practice
Urban guerilla and revolutionary antifascism
Drawing queer lines
Antifascism as a city map
Nonrepresentational urban drawing
The post-race city and non-racial urban imaginaries
Urban imaginaries and authoritarian urbanism
Fascism and urban violence
The aesthetic regime of fascist thought and desires
Spiral movement: How to write with fascism?
5G and urban aesthetics
Fascism - Urbanism - Aesthetics
Aestheticising and beautifying: Benjamin and/versus Rancière
Please feel free to get in touch: mail@guentergassner.com