Live Art Forms performative practices master’s program

Live Art Forms performative practices master’s program is accepting applications for its fourth academic year, which begins in October 2024.

As a recently developed program, Live Art Forms aims to teach a contemporary understanding of performance art, not as a discipline in between the visual and performing arts. Instead, we speak of it in terms of an undiscipline—a plurality of performative and aesthetic practices situated in a multiplicity of public spaces, on digital platforms and networked infrastructures, rooted in and spawning from the social and physical body.

The program enables students to grow with us towards these complex individual, collaborative, or collective performative practices in the spirit of artistic research and experimentation. We intend to foster and care for a multitude of worldviews and identities, despite the challenges of the current political climate.

Important threads in daily studying and teaching—as well as the program’s performative artistic research—are concerned with situating students’ projects in multiplicity of spaces; mentoring the use of digital technologies, and supporting the development of scores, choreographies, moving practices, as well as body-based research.

The program is hosted and directed by Professor JP Raether and Assistant Professor Tamara Antonijević, who teach performative practices and expanded dramaturgies. Mentorship in the program consists of guidance along a two-year sequence of classes in the form of group crits, presentations and showings, as well as individual consultations. Professor Kerstin Stakemeier offers a series of up to four theory seminars, expanding students’ knowledge on an array of themes, texts, and discourses.

A group of international Visiting Artist Lecturers is invited to expand the curriculum and co-teach lectures and seminars, week-long and thematically focused workshops. They are encouraged to engage with students’ work in individual mentoring sessions and provide feedback during presentation weeks. The past two years featured artists such as Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Melanie Bonajo, Alice Chauchat, Stefanie Comilang, Valentina Desideri, Every Ocean Hughes, Edit Kaldor, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, Sara Friend, Johanna Hedva, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Keiken, Jessika Khazrik, Doireann O’Malley, Anna Nowicka, Tamas Pall, Pawel Dudus, Omsk Social Club, Maria Scaroni, Simon Speiser, Jenna Sutela, Yana Thönnes, Pilvi Takala, caner teker, Jelena Visković, Christopher Weickenmeier and others.

The Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg provides excellent study and research opportunities to around 300 students and brings together a diverse range of creative practices under one roof. We have been nurturing the artistic and creative ambitions of our students and staff for over 350 years. The Academy is situated in a modernist, transparent, and light-filled pavilion architecture that harmoniously blends into its surrounding forest—successfully combining studios, workshops, and facilities on one campus.

As an international master’s program, Live Art Forms is taught in English. Knowledge of German is not a requirement for application. The program features a unique structure that allows it to be both intensively focused on our campus as a concentrated learning environment and at the same time fostering mobility of students and faculty across the metropolitan region of Germany and beyond. Therefore, students’ presence on campus at the academy is only required during four one-month-long phases in the fall, winter, spring, and summer. These intensive phases alternate with phases of independent study, during which students are free to pursue their projects elsewhere and off-campus, while digitally connected to our faculty. We especially welcome applications from international students and as part of the public university system, we offer the program free of tuition for students from all world regions.

Please visit our website for more information on the application process and detailed admission requirements or @liveartforms for regular updates and events. We offer an online information session on March 25, 2024, at 2pm (CET) with our core faculty. Register here with your full name and the country from which you will be joining the session.