Live Art Forms: performative practices master’s program

Live Art Forms, a new performative practices master’s program, is accepting applications for its second academic year, which begins in October 2022.

We welcome applications from potential students interested in expanding their performative and aesthetic practices across various disciplines and media, navigating a multidimensional space constituted by digital and technological platforms, moving bodies immersed in networks, and planetary publics that are fragmented yet interwoven.

The courses are structured along three axes: TECHNE, SOMA, and GEOS. Performative practices are contained by and immersed in the artistic and discursive space that emerges out of these axes. It is also a space from which these practices launch and are made public. TECHNE focuses on the use of contemporary technologies and media that support and host performative practices. It situates live artistic work in mixed and virtual realities, across a variety of devices and digital platforms. Theoretical and artistic texts, writing practices, and scoring and coding in human and machine languages all come together to contextualize students’ work. SOMA places the body as a system at the center of artistic work and teaches expanded dramaturgies, movement- or body-based practices, choreography, embodied concepts, and incorporated communal, infrastructural, and planetary metabolisms. GEOS supports the individual mapping of students’ practices, understanding them as ongoing processes of orientation in which students navigate a path from one position to the next, from one instance of making-public to the other. These pathways are taught as a sequence of positions within the complex vector space of contemporary aesthetic practice that represent approaches across disciplines, media, and genres. 

The postgraduate program is hosted and directed by Professor JP Raether (performative practices), Assistant Professor Tamara Antonijevic (expanded dramaturgies), and Professor Kerstin Stakemeier (theory). A group of international Visiting Artist Lecturers are invited to teach an array of workshops and seminars in varying constellations and engage with students’ work in individual mentoring sessions. 

The past winter semester included lectures and mentoring by Melanie Bonajo, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Doireann O’Malley, Omsk Social Club, The Agency / Yana Thönnes, and Jelena Viskovic. The coming summer semester will feature workshops with Alex Baczynski-Jenkins and Maria Scaroni, as well as lectures by Valentina Desideri and Johanna Hedva.

As a low-residency program, Live Art Forms especially welcomes applications from international students. The program features a uniquely structured course load with one-month-long teaching phases in the fall, winter, spring, and summer. These phases require students’ presence on campus at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. They alternate with longer phases of independent off-campus study, during which students will be digitally mentored by the faculty. 

All classes are taught in English. Knowledge of German is not a requirement for application. Please visit our website for more information on the application process and detailed admission requirements.

The Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg (AdBK Nuremberg) is a public state funded institution with no tuition fee for students.

AdBK Nuremberg provides excellent study and research opportunities to around 300 students and brings together a diverse range of creative practices under one roof. In addition to students’ individual artistic development, we promote transdisciplinarity, diversity and cultural open-mindedness. We have been nurturing the artistic and creative ambitions of our students and staff for over 350 years. The Academy is situated in a transparent and light-filled pavilion architecture that harmoniously blends into its surroundings—successfully combining studios, workshops and facilities.