Prof. Christoph Solstreif-Pirker, Ph.D. is an architect, artistic researcher, theorist, pedagogue, and a practicing artist working on performance, performative research, encounter-investigations, painting, drawing, sound, and text. After studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Graz University of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in architecture under the supervision of Milica Tomic and Henk Slager in 2019 (with distinction), followed by an MA in philosophy and psychoanalysis supervised by renowned artist and feminist philosopher Bracha L. Ettinger.
Between 2017 and 2021, Christoph served as Assistant Professor and Deputy Head of the Institute of Architecture and Landscape, TU Graz, and is currently Professor for Aesthetic Education at University College of Teacher Education Styria, Graz, Austria.
Christoph is interested in the traumatic state of our current living environment and the question of what art can propose for a condition of planetary burnout. In his widely acclaimed artistic practice, he engages with the traumatized planetary layers in an affirmative, compassionate and specifically feminine form of practice. Thereby, the artistic encounter with the unknown Other(s) does not signify a threat but rather a possibility of repositioning ourselves – as subjects, societies, and participants in this world.
Christoph’s work has appeared in GAM – Graz Architecture Magazine, Ruukku: Studies in Artistic Research, JAR: Journal for Artistic Research, PCS – Psychoanalysis, Culture, Society, and Comparative Literature Studies. He is curently preparing his first monograph on Matrixial Breath and Ettingerian Environmental Ethics, to be published by Routledge in 2024.
ORCID-ID: 0000-0002-4757-1463