Hello, I am Günter Gassner. I am an interdisciplinary researcher, writer, and spatial practitioner, working at the intersection of politics and design. My research engages with critical spatial theory, the politics of aesthetics, antifascism and militant queer activism, political theatre, as well as visual methodologies and historiographies. 

Theatre

Deleuze and Guattari

Antifascism

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 a designer before earning my PhD in Critical Urban Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). I 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. I am an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University and a Researcher at Technische Universität Berlin. 

My research has been published in journals such as GeoHumanities, Antipode, Cultural Geographies, Sub\Urban, The Sociological Review, Journal of Classical Sociology, Urban Geography, City, and Journal of Urbanism, as well as in edited volumes including Aesthetics and the city, Antifascism in London, and The detective of modernity. I am the author of Ruined skylines, a research monograph examining the urban skyline as a space for radical politics. I currently work on a new book project with the preliminary title Antifascist urbanism, which examines militant activism as a form of liberatory spatial praxis. 

Alongside my academic work, I collaborate on creative and research projects with institutions and collectives including the Walter Benjamin Archive at the Academy of the Arts Berlin, Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Poligional – Office for Urban Communication, Common Wealth Theatre, and Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus Berlin. In these collaborations, we explore the spatial dimensions of collective memory, queer antifascist theatre, anti-Oedipal geographies, Deleuze and Guattari’s early collaborations, as well as the intersections of spatial practices and critical theory in the work of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis.

I regularly present my work internationally and am always interested in exchange, dialogue, and collaboration. 

Please feel free to get in touch: mail@guentergassner.com