Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) is a two-year transdisciplinary Master’s Degree Programme at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Finland. The program explores emerging knowledges and practices at the intersections of visual cultures, curating and contemporary art. We facilitate students to develop and contextualize their own practices within and in between these contexts. It is open to artists, curators, scholars and practitioners with different backgrounds and experience, who are looking for opportunities to understand, challenge and shift the paradigms of contemporary art and the world around us.
ViCCA explores art in new contexts. Central for the program are the new and emergent professional practices, which are born and developed in the new spaces of cultural production. In the program art making and new professional agencies are explored within the broadened field of visual cultures.
Goal of Education
In ViCCA theory and practice are tightly interwoven and emphasis is put on developing each student’s artistic, curatorial and theoretical thinking. The programme offers great opportunities to develop research abilities and a sense for artistic and critical thinking. Learning from each other’s different professional backgrounds also plays an important role in the programme. The program offers the chance to broaden one’s professional identity and to create new ways of working, and new forms of professionalism.
ViCCA is based on the combination of the fields of visual culture, curatorial practice and contemporary art. The educational aim of the programme is to intertwine these fields in new ways and to find fresh new possibilities and practices. The program also offers an opportunity to develop, deepen and recontextualise one’s prior skills and knowledge.
Visual cultures is understood in a wide sense, as a versatile range of practices and phenomena. The focus in contemporary arts is in new practises that include artistic understanding on issues related to space, environments and social contexts studied from multiple perspectives. Through our multidisciplinary approach we encourage students to explore new forms of artistic practice and collaboration with other fields. Curating and mediating are explored as a path for reflection and acting, learning and organizing in art institutions and the public sphere. We aim to explore possibilities to understand, challenge and shift the paradigms of contemporary art and the world around us.
Career Opportunities
The students graduating from the programme can build their own creative positions and professional agencies in the multi-faceted, constantly changing and multi-disciplinary world. Students can deepen their own artistic, curatorial or theoretical practice and the students who have a background outside of visual culture and contemporary art can enrich their own fields of expertise with a new point of view – and a broad array of new methods of working with it. Beside the cultural and art field graduates can be employed also in universities and other sectors in society, working as experts in multidisciplinary groups of professionals.
Students that graduate from the programme can also work in a variety of already existing professions in the field of arts and culture, such as art museums, galleries, artists’ associations, art and culture projects or initiatives, and foundations or trust funds.
Internationalisation
The program is international and the main language of teaching is English. The programme is well connected to international networks, which are constantly built up and developed. Through these networks students have a possibility to do internships abroad or to study a part of their diploma in other countries with the help of exchange agreements. The programme hosts visits by international professionals and organises seminars, field trips and excursions abroad as part of the studies.
