MA Fine Arts accepting applications for fall 2018

Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) is one of the most progressive art schools in Europe, with 2,800 enrolled students. Its diverse range of degree and research programs include design, film, fine art, music, dance, theater, art education, media, and transdisciplinary studies.

The MA Fine Arts program at the ZHdK is a place to meet, find an audience, develop your practical and theoretical knowledge, discuss and deepen the focus of your artistic enquiry, while being exposed to different, complementary streams, movements, and trends emerging from, influencing, or even nourishing the contemporary art field.

You will be given the opportunity to develop and expand your network by being brought into contact with interesting personalities from the field of local and global contemporary culture within the vibrant environment of ZHdK, the city of Zurich, Switzerland, and the international art scene.

As you integrate into a large body of international students, you will be encouraged early on to cluster in smaller groups and formations—sometimes guided by one or more tutors and sometimes through a process of self-organization coordinated by you and other students. Your artistic practice is at the core of your studies.

Starting from your initial activities (formal, conceptual, curatorial, and/or editorial), you will be invited to join challenging workshops in order to gain experience of the potential of different materials and media. Well-equipped workshops for photo, video, sound, and 3D printing as well as for wood, metal, plaster, textile, ceramics, printmaking, etc., are open to all students. In parallel, you will attend seminars where you can learn about Prometheanism, witchcraft, molecular love, or the multiple takes on contemporary ecologies.

The program comprises supervised and individual projects, lectures, seminars, group tutorials, and study trips to international venues related to artistic production and discussion. In 2018 the MA students will have the opportunity to visit Manifesta 12 in Palermo, Sicily. Furthermore, ZHdK offers active international exchange programs, in particular with various partners in Hong Kong.

Your artistic practice, which may be studio based or extend into a post-studio dimension and is shaped by a multiplicity of analogue and digital media within the current paradigm of the post-internet area, will be presented on different occasions—possibly at RETA, the student-run MA Fine Arts exhibition program, and ultimately at the final degree show, which represents the culmination of your studies after either two or three academic years, according to your preference.

Faculty: Laura Arici, Donatella Bernardi, Christian Hübler, Dominique Lämmli, Uriel Orlow, Gerald Raunig, Christoph Schenker, Giaco Schiesser, Erik Steinbrecher, Yvonne Wilhelm

Visiting faculty and guests 2017/18: Charles Atlas, Pauline Boudry, Hans-Christian Dany, T.J. Demos, Jana Euler, Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth, Jörg Heiser, Juliana Huxtable, Quinn Latimer, Elisabeth Lebovici, Samuel Leuenberger, Jonas Lund, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Jasmina Metwaly, Alexandra Navratil, Elodie Pong, Dorothee Richter, Rory Rowan, Nadia Schneider Willen, Barbara Seiler, Shirana Shahbazi

Director, MA Fine Arts: Donatella Bernardi

Head, Department of Art & Media: Swetlana Heger

Registration and portfolio submission deadline: February 21, 2018

Further information
Admission requirements and registration application
ZHdK MA Fine Arts website

Contact: master.finearts [​at​] zhdk.ch