Fine Arts (Diploma)

The students' artistic work, their preoccupation with and engagement with painting are the focus. Weekly plenaries provide continuous space to jointly find and develop a linguistic form for the work. Accompanying excursions, exhibition and studio visits are organised to give the students insights into different artistic contexts. Joint exhibition projects and guest visits are an equally important part of the teaching. The plenary is held bilingually, with both German and English used as languages of communication. 

In addition, individual discussions are available by arrangement to address students' specific needs and development goals. Guests are welcome to register by email to attend the lectures.

Questions about the class are answered by:

Specifically includes the investigation of space and the body, in its physical and media expression, taking artistic and social issues into account.

The teaching in the drawing/painting class consists of group events (plenary) and individual discussions. We discuss individual works, processes and ideas and deal with the contents of art. This is enriched by excursions, exhibition visits, project work, collaborations, guests and thematic workshops.

Questions about the class are answered by:

Shaping and designing also involves thought processes. That is why talking, discussing, asking, and investigating are an important part of our classroom activities. 

In addition to working in and around the studio, we go on smaller and larger excursions, cook together, read texts together and ask ourselves how the world works and what works in it as art and what doesn't. We look around (sometimes locally) for the sources of our actions and creating and try to understand them. Where does material come from? What is a work of art and what is it part of? What are the often subtle differences between a thing, an object, a commodity and a work of art? By what natural and unnatural processes are they formed? We, being humans, too, are part of the forces that shape this planet, right? But is this man-made earth a natural or unnatural phenomenon? Nature, literature, migration, the environment are some of the topics we discuss and question in class. We research, try out, move, think and listen. We do. 

In class we mostly speak German and English.

Questions about the class are answered by:

We have moved into the new building and the summer semester will be the first time together with the students and teachers of Integrated Design. We will establish the workplaces and routines in the new studio and develop joint exhibitions with the official opening ceremony of the new building and the University Days. We also want to plan an excursion. The “Reallabor Kunst am Bau” (real-world art in architecture laboratory) will continue and the realisations will begin this semester. Ellen Blumenstein, Ruth Lübke and I will oversee the artistic projects. The development of the accompanying publication is supervised by Andrea Rauschenbusch and Gregor Schreiter in a separate course. Planning for the project on artistic perspectives on mobility, in cooperation with Heritage Space Hanoi, is being finalised and is scheduled to begin in September 2023. The draft monument for the abused and murdered children in the orphanage is in place and will be approved by the authorities.

Individual discussions
Each student should at least make one appointment. Please do prepare those individual meetings! Send me pictures and videos or maybe texts on work you wish to discuss a day prior to the meeting. Of course, you may also send over sketches or description of your projects.

Plenary
The plenary is the forum to present you work and for discussion on the arts. Do plan at least one such presentation per semester

In the free class we work in different forms and genres. We prioritise rigorous formal and conceptual experimentation, practice trusting intuition, and make space for failure and for surprises. We also to try to foster an environment where collective, horizontal exchange can take place, since open questions are sometimes more generative than authorative answers. Here we do not study any one artistic method. Instead, we engage in holding complexity; looking and listening closely when encountering images, objects, and signs; recognising the limits and wisdoms of one’s own positionality and perspective; “seeing” what is not immediately apparent, and practicing critique with rigour and compassion. In the "interesting times” we live in, these feel like good things to know. 

IMAGE/SOUND/COLLABORATION is an interdisciplinary course focussing on photography, film/video, sound and methods of collaborative exchange. Working independently and in collaborative workshops, the course explores how editing, sound and language can be used to change the way images are read and open up new ways of working in dialogue with other artists. Films by artists are shown at regular intervals, experimental music is listened to and key texts are discussed in the group.

We mostly speak English.