Bard College Berlin introduces new Bachelor of Arts degree in Artistic Practice and Society

Bard College Berlin has introduced a new Bachelor of Arts degree program in Artistic Practice and Society (APS). The program is unique in Germany, offering undergraduates the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary artistic practice within the framework of an academic degree, and taking full account of key developments in the art world, past and present. As they refine their skills in specific areas of art practice, students pursue a broad-based course of study in the humanities and social sciences, and examine the ways in which understandings of art have been shaped historically, and continue to transform. In particular, we consider how ecological crisis exerts pressure on the idea of a division between “nature” and “culture,” and how awareness of the impact of imperialism and colonialism alters modes of artistic invention, curation, and display. 
 
Bard College Berlin is an ideal home for this program. Courses are taught by professorial faculty and visiting artists in a wide range of fields, and artistic projects are conceived and developed in a studio and performance “factory” building on a residential campus designed around former East German embassies in northeast Berlin.  

Bard College Berlin is affiliated with Bard College, New York, which has an unparalleled reputation in the arts among American liberal arts colleges. Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is consistently ranked among the Top 10 Master of Fine Arts programs worldwide, and the college hosts a critically-acclaimed celebration of the arts each year with its eight-week festival, SummerScape. Bard College Berlin benefits directly from its connection with Bard in the United States, due to the expertise and reputation of its arts faculty, who teach undergraduate classes and programs as well as graduate studies. Bard College’s distinguished faculty and alumni have been recognized with the highest honors, including multiple Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship appointments in recent years.

Candidates for the Bachelor of Arts degree program in Artistic Practice and Society at Bard College Berlin complete courses at the foundational and advanced levels in visual and performing arts, photography and film as well as elective courses in a host of other fields, such as architecture, ceramics, sound, and dance. The program reflects the essentially interdisciplinary nature of much present-day artistic production, and the intersection between art and scholarly research, whereby urgent issues—such as forced migration—are addressed by means of documentary investigation in a variety of media. Students also acquire familiarity with historical and current artistic movements and institutional transformations, and with new approaches to curation—to which they are encouraged to contribute. 
 
Professor Dr. Dorothea von Hantelmann, director of the Program, art historian and  curator, who joined BCB in 2017 following her time as the first holder of the documenta professorship in Kassel, notes that the program allows students not only to pursue their interest in art but also to “engage in meaningful ways with the most pressing issues of our time.” Professor Dr. Catherine Toal, Dean of Bard College Berlin, adds that the program reflects that the best and most transformative artistic production “emerges from wide-ranging historical, cultural and practical knowledge, as well as from an awareness of change and crisis in the contemporary world.” 

Like all degree programs at Bard College Berlin, the new BA in Artistic Practice and Society includes a core program dedicated to the central questions, works and problems which lie at the heart of all academic disciplines. It is based on the premise that artistic work, like every other human endeavor, necessarily has a social origin and purpose, and draws its inspiration from that wider situation. Unlike single-discipline practicing arts degrees, the new BA foregrounds this social context as part of its object of study, and is informed by the varieties of contemporary art practice. Like the other degree programs in this respect too, the BA in Artistic Practice and Society provides numerous opportunities for civic and social engagement, and relates these activities to the profile of contemporary art, for which political activism is often a central and controversial commitment. 
 
All students completing the program in Artistic Practice and Society will receive a BA degree from Bard Annandale. In addition, all qualifying students receive a German BA degree. Bard College Berlin has been recognized at state level in Berlin since 2011, and was recently reaccredited for 10 years by the Deutsche Wissenschaftsrat. The first cohort of Artistic Practice and Society students will begin their studies this fall.

Post Date: 03-07-2023