Berlin University of the Arts
The Arts in Postgraduate Study
was 57 new products and six registered patents. “That’s exactly what I mean,” exclaims Axel Kufus: “Certain ideas only come about when you approach something from different perspectives and recognize new interpretations of its potential!” Good teaching in the arts can, however, also take a quite different shape that involves striking a difficult balance between external inspiration and one’s own maturity. “My job is to put the students in closer touch with themselves,” says Professor Pia Fries. She teaches painting and is keen to guide her protégés carefully towards finding their own style. The 15 students in her class work in two large studios with ceilings five or six metres high and with one wall made entirely of glass. Each student has his or her own workspace, and it is here that the future painters create their work, in full view of each other. Students also gather once a week with Professor Fries to benefit from peer critiques. This week, it is the turn of a young curly-haired man wearing a casual pullover: he projects a video installation onto a painted screen on the wall. The images play in an infinite loop. The video shows a close-up of a person’s stomach smeared with dried clay, and with each breath, cracks open up in the material. The young artist explains how the work was created – and his colleagues cross-examine him with critical questions. Together, they discuss the combination of video installation and painting and debate the various levels of the work. “The dialogue, the verbal debate the students have amongst themselves about their work is important to me,” says Professor Fries. “By discussing the results, we develop the criteria for our own working
methods and for effective art.” In this phase she prefers to keep her students in the nurturing environment of the studio. While some of her colleagues believe in quickly establishing links to galleries and encourage the early exhibition of students’ work, Fries considers this to be counter-productive: “Artists should be motivated by an inner drive and not by supposed success on the market.” For her, good teaching is tantamount to a gentle, meticulously guided ripening process in which there is space for trial and error. Despite the individuality of these teaching approaches, a curiosity for what is happening behind the doors of other studios is the unifying element at the Berlin University of Arts, says designer Axel Kufus. Consequently, he has initiated an innovative project called UdK Berlin Collisions: together with some of his professorial colleagues he chooses a week in January and declares it a teaching-free period. There are just two rules: every student has to participate – and nobody is allowed to remain in their own college. The result saw dancers studying a performance with fellow students who had never danced, and musicians getting together with designers to create new instruments. Even a felled fir tree was transformed into a soundbox, Kufus recalls. It is this understanding of the bigger picture that is so valuable: students experience working processes in other disciplines, gain inspiration from contact with new peers, and enhance their understanding of their own discipline when they have to explain it. “Everybody can learn from this kind of format – students as well as professors.”
The Central Institute for Continuing Education draws upon the broad expertise of the Berlin University of the Arts: it offers several Master’s degree programmes and certificate courses, specially tailored to the needs of artists. The programme in Sound Studies, for example, concentrates on sound research; in the areas of Cultural Journalism or Theatre in Education/Performing Art, participants can build on their existing knowledge and gain an additional qualification. The certificate courses, on the other hand, are regarded as further education enabling the university to support its artists beyond their degree programmes. Specializations include stage presence, curating or music therapy. The Central Institute for Continuing Education, which was established just a few years ago, exemplifies the UdK’s approach in connecting its four colleges – College of Fine Arts, College of Architecture, Media and Design, College of Music and College of Performing Arts – thus opening up new pathways for the students.
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