BA application deadline: March 18, 2016
MA application deadline: April 8
HEAD – Geneva (Geneva University of Art and Design)
Visual Arts Department
Boulevard James-Fazy 15
1201 – Genève
Switzerland
Dear candidate,
Let us introduce ourselves: we are artists, curators, theoreticians, and we are teaching within one of the most important structures for art education in Switzerland, the Visual Arts Department at HEAD – Geneva. Formerly known as the Geneva School of Fine Arts, our school is a pioneering institution, one of the oldest in the country. We are engaged in a tradition that considers art transmission as a site for freedom and experimentation, for aesthetic invention and non-conventional research, as well as for prototyping alternative forms of social organization. We are now looking for candidates with strong personalities, with diverse backgrounds, and a real desire to experience a broadened vision of art practice. We are seeking Swiss and international individuals with an intense will to learn art history and theory, and to navigate the international art world through the dynamic art scene in Geneva. We want candidates with great expectations in art, a curiosity for high-level conversations, and also an appetite for hands-on experimentations.
Our department welcomes more than 300 students and almost 100 professors and guests. It offers a 5–year long curriculum, organized in two sequences, bachelor’s and master’s. Our bachelor’s program is structured by three interconnected sites that are defined by their practical potentialities, technical facilities, and pedagogical methodologies: the first one focuses on 2D (painting, drawing, printed matter), the second one on 3D (sculpture, installation, spatial practice), while the third one is called 4D (for time and technologies-based practices: video, film, photography, performance, sound art). At the core of our programs lie the studios, spaces that allow work and concentration, meetings and communal life, production and public presentations. On a daily basis, our students are engaged in the organic development of their own work, in relation to a group of professors, a series of teams formed of diverse subjectivities, linked by affinities and specific practices, and particular aesthetic and didactic positions. Their role is to encourage, criticize, and open new perspectives on the work in progress. Studio visits, critical sessions, informal self-teaching by students give rhythm to the weekly activity of the studios, relying on these main ideas: presence and commitment.
Our pedagogy balances in-between inside and outside, freedom and order, closure and disclosure in order to accompany each students’ project toward its fluid realization, enhancing one’s autonomy, inventiveness, and pragmatism. Aside from the studio practice, theory classes are led by professors whose approach opens art history to literature, cinema, or live arts, as well as to a constant crossover with cutting-edge research in social, cultural, and political sciences. Courses are participatory, theory is envisaged as a practice, and taught by figures that are themselves renowned researchers and agents that work in cooperation with artists. An interdisciplinary approach reigns as well over the technical classes, led by artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, composers, engineers, with a particular emphasis placed on production in fields such as: publishing, through a program, which invites students to develop an artist’s book; writing, in the context of a class that lies at the intersection of theory and poetry, fiction and art production (the best texts are published as well); and art in the public sphere, with our Office for Public Interventions, which involves students in actual art commissions by public institutions.
Our philosophy relies on singular paradoxes: whilst being a quite large structure, our pedagogical principles are based on fluid groups of art agents and human-scaled teaching entities; even if our programs incorporate ambitious theoretical components, the teachings look like they are far from being academic; if technical skills are crucial for young artists, they are taught through experience-based, ludic, and non-pedantic methodologies. Then, step-by-step, towards the master’s level, our curriculum relies more intensively on project-driven pedagogy, opening up to the public sphere, confronting various audiences through particular long-term axes such as research (CCC—Research-Based Master Program), transmission (Trans—Socially Committed Practices) and production (Work.Master—Contemporary Artistic Practices). By articulating different intensities, from the individual, long-term learning process to the intensive, temporary one of the collective experience, our objective remains in the forging, through mutual learning, of specific “tools,” apparatuses for self-teaching, intellectual emancipation, and critical investigation of the worlds to come—for future artists, which means You, the artists of the future.
Oh, and before we forget: you can find the details on the recruitment processes, the deadlines and the necessary files while clicking here.
Sincerely,
The Visual Arts Department Faculty and Guest Professors
Benoit Antille, Myriam Abourousse, Emmanuelle Antille, John M. Armleder, Caroline Bachmann, Stuart Bailey, Lars Bang Larsen, Vincent Barras, Pascal Beausse, Fanny Benichou, Donatella Bernardi, Alain Berset, Pascal Berthoud, Denise Bertschi, Tiphanie Blanc, Cécile Boss, Roxane Bovet, Yann Chateigné, Catherine Chevalier, Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza (RELAX), Dan Coombs, Mathieu Copeland, Claire de Ribaupierre, Choé Delarue, Carla Demierre, Jacques Demierre, Verena Dengler, Andreas Dobler, Raffael Dörig, Nathalie Dupasquier, Clovis Duran, Latifa Echakhch, Kodwo Eshun, Barbara Fedier, Fredi Fischli, Dora Garcia, Jill Gasparina, Vidya Gastaldon, Aloïs Godinat, Christian Gonzenbach, Hervé Graumann, Michel Grillet, Fabrice Gygi, Pierre Hazan, Katharina Hohmann, Pablo Hurtado, Zara Idelson, Christoph Keller, Katrin Kettenacker, Christophe Kihm, Vincent Kohler, Quentin Lannes, Maria La Ribot, Charlotte Laubard, Pierre Leguillon, Samuel Leuenberger, Christelle Lheureux, Geneviève Loup, Tobias Madison, Jean-Luc Manz, Serge Margel, Laure Marville, Valérie Mavridorakis, Doreen Mende, Florent Meng, Raynald Metraux, Microsillons, Claudia Müller, Sophie Nys, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Florence Ostende, Virginie Otth, Emilie Parendeau, Ileana Parvu, Mai-Thu Perret, Denis Pernet, Aurélie Pétrel, Stéphanie Pfister, Eric Philippoz, Claude Piguet, Daniel Pinkas, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Fabienne Radi, Gene Ray, Virginie Rebetez, Delphine Reist, Jean-Xavier Renaud, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Olivier Riechsteiner, Didier Rittener, Christian Robert-Tissot, Gordan Savicic, Laurent Schmid, Janis Schroeder, Simon Senn, Bruno Serralongue, Thierry Simonot, Dan Solbach, Bodan Stehlik, Benjamin Stroun, Claude-Hubert Tatot, Zwann Thomenn, Ambroise Tièche, Frank Westermeyer, Ingrid Wildi, Daniel Zea, David Zerbib