Escola Superior Artística do Porto (ESAP) and The New Centre for Research & Practice are announcing the opening of applications to a joint, international postgraduate program in the arts. The degree in Visual Arts and Research will be a one-year theoretical and practical survey for students to develop their own trajectories around the study of the arts. The first cohort of participants will join in October 2022—applications will remain open from July 4 to August 12.
Conceived as a space of open dialog with intellectuals of international recognition, the Postgraduate Degree in Visual Arts and Research provides solid foundations for the study of the arts through the relationship between philosophical concepts, new technologies and contemporary aesthetics in the broadest possible sense. The program will be operated virtually and in English language by ESAP and The New Centre, and its main courses will be delivered in an exclusive capacity to the selected cohort by J.-P. Caron, Anna Longo, Cécile Malaspina, Jason Mohaghegh, Reza Negarestani, Mohammad Salemy, and Klaus Speidel.
Located in the center of Porto, ESAP is an independent non-profit Portuguese art school offering undergraduate, postgraduate and master degrees in arts, media and architecture. ESAP operates as a collective of a research-fostering community and is a meeting place for artists, scholars, curators, critics, and other intellectuals. ESAP is academically linked to several universities and cultural institutions around the world through organizing conferences, publishing books and operating exhibitions and residencies. ESAP’s teaching methodology is sustained by various procedures that configure high-level, contemporary arts practices as it remains informed by novel reimaginations of the world of art and its structures.
The New Centre for Research & Practice has established itself in the last decade as the leading institution for online graduate-level learning in philosophy, art and curation, architecture and design, and transdisciplinary humanities. The New Centre seminars are lead by renowned artists and intellectuals, including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Julieta Aranda, Elie Ayache, Ray Brassier, Benjamin Bratton, Yuk Hui, Maria Lind, Patricia Reed, Anne-Françoise Schmid, Moses Serubiri, Nick Srnicek, Tiziana Terranova, and Fernando Zalamea. The New Centre community of friends, members and researchers includes individuals and institutions from all over the world. The New Centre is partly responsible for major shifts in the intellectual environment of the humanities in the last few years, pioneering debates on movements like neorationalism, accelerationism, and the new materialisms. The New Centre students are often admitted to prestigious PhD programs and receive acclaimed fellowships and awards, in addition to having gone on to work for reputable institutions. They regularly contribute to The Centre’s own platform, &&& (Tripleampersand), which runs both an online journal and a publishing house. They organize and participate in The Centre’s parallel academia events, such as last spring’s HyperAnnotations 2.0 at Venice Biennale.
ESAP and The New Centre have come together to offer this postgraduate because both institutions understand the gaps in traditional art pedagogy, given that the official academic procedures often stunt or even at times prevent rigorous intellectual developments. Both institutions believe that a truly transdisciplinary education involves providing practical and conceptual tools to younger and emerging thinkers and artists so they can arrive at new horizons while establishing strong networks and fields of reference. While most available graduate-level art education focuses on technicalities, ESAP and The New Centre, on the contrary, have developed a program that encourages speculative explorations in what is most advanced in current artistic research while simultaneously maintaining an uncompromised precision in relation to the history of art, methodologies of creation, philosophy, science and technology, blending historiography, critical theory and practical digital laboratories.
With the postgraduate program in Visual Arts and Research, ESAP and The New Centre invite you to discover and take part in shaping future of art education.
