Call for applications: CCC research-based Master program in the Visual arts Department

The CCC research-based Master is currently welcoming applications for entry in 2019. The CCC research-based Master is one of the three Master programmes (HES-SO) offered at the Visual Arts Department at Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD). 

”You can call them sensory arms,” it told her. 
“What are they for?” 
Silence.

–Octavia E. Butler, Dawn. Xenogenesis:1, 1987

What does it mean to live, speak, resist, listen and create within a fabric of uneven but entangled geographies in the 21st Century? Which modes of thinking and means of making do we need to tackle the ongoing ecological, historical, techno-political and epistemological disruptions? How does research by the means of art matter in the world beyond a study programme?

The CCC research-based Master is an intensive two-year programme that trains students to develop project-specific methods that give form to their research process as cross-disciplinaryresearchers, writers and art practitioners. The curriculum stresses experimental approaches to contemporary arts at the crossroads of life, science, archive and academia, and fosters peer-to-peer learning as well as self-education. We welcome candidates with artistic as well as non-artistic backgrounds who have a keen interest in confronting and rethinking questions of cultural expressions, modes of cognition, power production and social structures in the 21st Century, and who are willing to commit to an international full-time Master course in Geneva, Switzerland. The programme is bilingual (English and/or French) and students can opt to write their thesis in French or English. 

The CCC research-based Master offers the curriculum, context and care to help students build a plurilingual and transcultural group amidst a cross- and post-disciplinary educational environment. Students are expected to engage in a critical update of the role and agency of contemporary art for world-making. They process their individual projects in the Research Practice and Situated Art Practices seminars with the objective to try out and hone their skills with different research methods, writing practices and presentation formats. Further, the programme encourages team work with case study- and project-based seminars in Curatorial Politics, Political Studies, Critical Studies and Theory Fiction, foregrounding the need for debate and new research tools. The Self-organized Seminar and the Reading Group provide space for student-led curricular trajectories, along with cross-sectional activities such as the voyage d’étude, which contribute to regional and international exchange opportunities. The CCC promotes long-term research processes for students to develop an archive, an own voice, sustainable knowledge and the ability to articulate a self-reflective positioning beyond graduation. 

The diverse future professional opportunities available to CCC-enrolled students speak to their own multiple skills and the richness of the programme itself. CCC alumni-ae are active in contemporary art projects, museums, curatorial independent activities or film events. They collaborate with social and natural science research institutions and are present among NGOs and human rights advocacy groups. They may also continue their research endeavours in the context of a practice-based PhD programme. 

CCC projects in 2018/19 include, among others, the collective publication Xenogenesis by the Theory Fiction seminar, the students’ participation in the international Geneva-based conference Anthroposcreams, Desert(ed) Destinations and Wilding Weather – Wish You Were Here(a TAAG-project closely linked to the Critical Studies seminar), the exhibition Transit (permission to pass throughat LIYH Exhibition space, the seminar-exhibition the many voices of les indiennesby the Curatorial Politics seminar, the PhD-Forum contribution to the Madrid-based journal #Re-Visiones, and the collaboration with Harun-Farocki-Institut and e-flux journal for the Navigation Beyond Vision conference at HKW in Berlin. The CCC research-based Master and PhD-Forum also co-organise the Public Seminar Navigating Turbulence.

Head of Programme: Doreen Mende. 

Faculty: Kodwo Eshun, Pierre Hazan, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Gene Ray. 

Visiting Faculty: Çağla E. Aykaç, Dora Garcia. Assistants:Camilla Paolino, Julia Pecheur. 

Guests Lecturers: Ramon Amaro, Anna Barseghian, Zach Blas, Anselm Franke, Marina Fokidis, Ayesha Hameed, Charles Heller, Philippe Macasdar, Sven Lütticken, Patricia Reed, Ana Teixeira-Pinto, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Françoise Vergès, among others. 

The CCC research-based Master was founded in 2000 at the Visual Arts Department at HEAD – Genève. Located in French-speaking Switzerland, it is one of the oldest higher education programmes specialising in contemporary research practices by the means of arts in Europe. It is devised to provide students with a thorough grounding in the fields of critical, curatorial, cross-cultural and cybermedia studies. The C in CCC may open up to horizons of conceptual, constellational, communal, colonial, contemporary, computational, compositional, conversational, cyclonopedic, correlational, cosmological, controversial or confessional investigations… The CCC research-based Programme, Master and PhD Forum, is a member of the European Forum for Advanced Practices, funded by COST Action 2018–20. 

Application procedure / Further information: ccc.head [​at​] hesge.ch