Nika Pfeifer works at the intersections of text, performance and artistic research. Her research-based polymedia approach combines different working methods, media and technologies, including writing, painting, video, photography, installation, and audio-visual performance. Nika’s works have been presented in institutional settings and in numerous autonomous art spaces (Vienna Secession, fluctuating Kunstsalon) festivals and in international collaborations. She studied at the University of Vienna focusing on language and public discourses and holds an interdisciplinary PhD. Nika publishes poetry, prose, scenic texts, radiophone and performative works.
Nika Pfeifer’s poetry and texts have been published in literary & art magazines (e.g. nevertheless, kolik, the gap) and anthologies (e.g. kookbooks, Schoeffling); transmedia works for Wr. Festwochen, Vienna Secession. Nika has taught creative writing at the Vienna Poetry School, the University of Arizona, and at Georgetown University. Reinhard Priessnitz Prize 2012. Part of Alan Nakagawa’s Haiku Sound Installation, OCMA/Orange County Museum of Art Santa Ana/CA, and ars electronica & American Arts Incubator with Rashin Fahandej. Artist residencies in Italy, Finland, Germany, India, Belgium, USA, UK, Slovenia, China. 2020 Max Kade Writer in Residence at Georgetown University 2020.
Nika Pfeifer's approach to language, be it in her poems, her prose, her radio, photo and video works, is as playful as it is multi-layered, not only describing with words, but making something tangible with and through words, bringing together seemingly incompatible things. In addition, she develops - often in collaboration with other artists - participatory exhibition and performance projects, most recently together with Guadalupe Aldrete, Maria Hanl, Friederike Mayröcker, Edith Payer and Synne Genzmer "What's the time", fluc 2021. Publications include: TUCSONICS, Berlin/Vienna: hochroth 2019. VIOLANTE, Vienna: Czernin 2017. Coming up: Urban Magic (2022) together with Lukas Matthaei.
After extensive years of travelling, Nika Pfeifer now lives and works in Brussels and Vienna.