Major in Art in Public Spheres MAPS students focus in their independent projects on creating artistic interventions in public space, under the umbrella of institutional programs, or as part of everyday situations. All student projects are intensively guided throughout their development through individual and collective artistic mentorship, docents, and collaborative formats entailing exchange with fellow students. Competency in the treatment of both materials and media is highly valued in the practical work on projects and goes hand in hand with raising questions and confronting current issues and stances through reflective means and applied research in a broad range of discourses such as art and the public realm, community studies, institutional studies, urban studies/urban design, and critical image practices in various media of the art of the post-digital age. MAPS students not only become knowledgeable about various formats for exchange and outreach/education, but also develop curatorial, collaborative, and intermediatorial/teaching skills.
Major in Critical Image Practices CIP students concentrate on projects that focus on current, socially relevant image practices addressing social environments, AI, and the post-digital. Topics include the use of media images, image politics, and post internet art. Current debates around the image as a medium are elaborated, making the course as much action-centered as it is media-centered. During the program, students are intensively guided as they develop their projects through individual and collective artistic mentorship, docents, and collaborative formats with fellow students such as colloquia. CIP graduates are well equipped to apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills and develop their individual potential not only through exhibitions, but also in broader contexts of professional fields of art and design. The CIP study program conveys competencies in reflection, communication, and active engagement along with material, technical, and theoretical expertise in image-based media. The range of artistic capabilities developed during the program includes a capacity for thinking conceptually in an interdisciplinary way, basing projects in solid active engagement, and building finely nuanced strategies for reaching the public. Students later work, for example, as curators, as photo reporters or as artists.
Major in Art Teaching MAT students center upon creating and positioning their personal artistic projects in relation to the didactic context of art education. MAT graduates develop independent artistic, art pedagogical, and art outreach projects incorporating contemporary methodologies and debates concerning participation, personal empowerment, institutional critique, and critical approaches to the very concept of art education itself – within the school or outside, e.g., in the context of art museum pedagogical outreach programs. Certified by the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education EDK and qualifying graduates to become teachers of visual arts up to the secondary level (in Switzerland, so-called Matura schools), the MAT program of the Master of Arts in Fine Arts HSLU is deeply based in teaching practice: the foundation entails individual teaching and development of competencies necessary for the everyday work of newly qualified teachers of visual arts, in art education, or as lecturers.
In all three Masters programs – Major in Art in Public Spheres MAPS , Major in Critical Image Practices CIP, and Major in Art Teaching MAT – the respective curricula are complemented by individual pedagogical and artistic mentorship as well as collaborative work within the StudioLabs, with fellow students, docents, Heads of the respective three major programs, and Head of the overall MFA program.
The Lucerne School of Art and Design HSLU immediately houses unique sound and video studio facilities and is superbly equipped with printing, textile, and 3D
workshops (textile, metal, plastic, wood, etc.), which are all available to MFA students.
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