Application period: 1–31 May, 2014
Spatial Strategies
Weissensee Academy of Art, Berlin
Bühringstr 20
13086 Berlin
T +49 (30) 47705.342
F +49 (30) 47705.290
[email protected]
Public space is a hole everybody strove to close,
but it could not be plugged; that is why it was called public.
The money that permeates this hole is like a sieve.
It preserves nothing and and retains nothing, so far as we can remember.
The Master of Arts course in Space Strategies is founded on a conception of praxis in urban space that draws on architectural and artistic practices, focussing on the discipline of art in public space. In the context of post-war modernity, art in public space has played a crucial role in the discussion of the social relevance of art. However, it has become necessary to reconsider the concept of space and the concept of publicness.
Space Strategies parses the concept of space in terms of virtual, global and urban spaces, confronting public space, and artistic production within it, with the actuality of these three spaces. With global developments of the past two decades having completely undermined what is regarded the shared conception of publicness (Öffentlichkeit), the Master course seeks to redefine the challenges and political responsibilities of the individual within contemporary contexts. Space Strategies aims to understand artistic work as an insistence on publicness as a sphere where democratic participation constitutes social spaces, living spaces, and the allocation of essential resources.
Applicants are sought from all disciplines of fine arts and humanities, as well as graduates and professionals from the fields of architecture, urbanism, and cultural and social sciences. The course offers further qualifications in the cutting edge between artistic praxis and discourse, from art theory and art criticism to political theory and art history, critical urban research, migration studies, and automata theory. Catchphrases such as artistic research, interdisciplinary, intervention and artistic curating are critically scrutinized. In the same way, the structure of the course itself is interrogated as a product of the Bologna Process of European education reforms. This process is part of a trend that is rendering knowledge subordinate to efficiency, reducing it to an artefact that is expedient to the market one day, only to be rationalised away the next. Since the economisation of knowledge goes hand in hand with the economisation of urban space, it is of particular importance to tease out these parallels in relation to the urban, the virtual, the global and ourselves.
Spatial Strategies above all aims to develop an independent artistic or art-related praxis that above all draws on a sense of autonomy and a political sensibility.
The Master of Arts degree is awarded upon successful completion of the program.
Lecturers:
Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann: Political Theory/Art in Public Space
Günter Nest: Intercultural Comparative Studies
Stephan Mörsch / Gerda Heck: Migration/Urbanism
Michael Schwarz: Automata Theory
Kathrin Wildner: Critical Urban Research
For further information and application requirements, please see www.kh-berlin.de/index.
