03 Feb 2015

Call for Applications: MaHKU, MA Fine Art

MaHKU (Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design) offers a one-year Master of Arts (MA) program. The program consists of seminars, workshops, studios, and tutorials where artists, architects, curators, designers, and various theorists share their knowledge, creativity, and professional insights with MaHKU students.

The MaHKU MA Fine Art program departs from the student's individual research trajectory: a project proposal that is part of the application procedure for the master program. Through various components of the program, such as critical studies, studio practice, spatial practice, and curatorial studies, students are incited further to realize and contextualize their own research projects. The master year is concluded by a curated exhibition and a research report.

Since its start in 2004, the MaHKU MA Fine Art program has always attracted a body of students from various parts of the world. In fact, students from 45 different countries have studied in the program. The diversity in both geographic background and artistic interest has contributed profoundly to MaHKU's dynamic research environment.

MaHKU's vigorous research environment is enhanced even more by an experimental curriculum focused on artistic thought processes, critical spatial practices, and context-responsiveness. Moreover, the MaHKU MA Fine Art program has a history of implying various collaborations with well-known international platforms in its curriculum. Recent examples are the Venice Biennale 2011, with the project Any-Medium-Whatever; dOCUMENTA 13, 2012, where MaHKU was one of the ten invited art schools for the Innovative Art Academies Network; the 1st Tbilisi Triennial for Art, Education and Research, 2012; Joyful Wisdom, Parallel event 13th Istanbul Biennale, 2013, and Aesthetic Jam, Taipei Biennial 2014.

In the context of its experimental research environment, MaHKU MA Fine Art has been at the forefront of the debate on artistic research worldwide taking place over the recent decade. In 2006, MaHKU was one of the initiators of the European Artistic Research Netwerk (EARN), a joint venture of ten European Graduate Schools. In that same year, MaHKU set up two dissemination platforms: the yearly Dutch Artistic Research Event (DARE) with speakers such as Claire Doherty, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hubertus von Amelunxen, Maria Lind, Nikolaus Hirsch and Ane Hjort Guttu; and the publication series MaHKUzine, Journal of Artistic Research with themes such as: A Certain Ma-Ness, Nameless Science, Urban Knowledge, Spatial Practice, Epistemic Encounters, and As the Academy Turns.

Furthermore, the MaHKU Fine Art program takes a clear and distinct stance in the current debate on PhD research in visual art. PhD research is in fact the institutional consciousness of the art academy, MaHKU claims while involving related concepts such as autonomous space as a place for demonstration and reflection, as a location for novel experiments in visual processes, and as a laboratory for developing novel artistic processes of thinking and production. Not surprisingly, various PhD research trajectories in the MaHKU Fine Art curriculum affect a concretization and catalyzation of the debate on doctoral research in the arts. In 2011, MaHKU researcher Irene Kopelman obtained the first degree of Doctor of Fine Arts (DFA) in the Netherlands. Currently, two PhD researchers at MaHKU, Jeremiah Day and Lonnie van Brummelen, are supported by a NWO/Mondriaan Fund grant.

In conclusion, MaHKU MA Fine Art considers itself a test site, where the program continuously produces debates and publications dealing with facilitating, situating and composing topical, relevant forms of graduate art education.

MaHKU lecturers include a.o. Lara Almarcegui, 
Tiong Ang, Annette W. Balkema, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Mariana Castillo Deball, Jeremiah Day, Natasha Ginwala, Maria Hlavajova, Klaas Hoek, Jan Kaila, Irene Kopelman, Annette Krauss, Geert Lovink, Liza May Post, Domeniek Ruyters, Henk Slager (Dean), Mick Wilson and Edwin Zwakman. External Examiner: Marquard Smith.

MaHKU Master of Arts degrees are internationally acknowledged and accredited by the Open University Validation Services in London (OU).

Information and Application 
MA Fine Art.
Application and admission during the year.
Students with a BA in Fine Art, Spatial Design and other relevant studies are welcome to apply.

Ultimate deadline for 2015 is April 30.