Printmaking is a trajectory within the Bachelor of Visual Arts in the specialisation Graphic Design. In the Master’s programme in Graphic Design, the distinction between the trajectories is eliminated.

Art as a perspective on developments in visual culture

In the Print Making studio, graphic practices are approached from the perspective of art. This means that the developments of the current mass-media visual culture are searched for and problematized on the basis of the conviction that art is just that place, just that kind of practice, from which a critical perspective on contemporary cultural developments can be opened. A place where practices of text and image production, of publishing and presentation can be developed that escape the norms imposed by our current communication culture.

In the constellation of the Graphic Design trajectory, Print Making relates to Graphic Design and Illustration as the arts relate to the applied arts. This approach reciprocally implies that the practice of the graphic artist cannot possibly relate only to the arts, but is ever more broadly involved with all aspects of culture that are mediated or shaped by the continuous and unbridled production flow of text and image, of information and communication. Artistic practice is thus conceived as that practice which seeks to free text and image production from a efficiency and clarity presupposed in communication contexts, from an instrumental determinacy that reduces the speaking of texts and images according to unambiguous norms.

To this end, the Printing Studio will reflect on the technological developments that have led to a standardized cultural production according to a logic of reproduction and distribution. The technological evolutions are thereby approached artistically according to three focuses that should enable the student to investigate the specific speaking of art and to transform it into an individual artistic practice: Reproduction and Art, Mass Media and Art, and Artists’ Books.

First bachelor

In the first bachelor year, the main focus is on the careful initiation of both analog (re)production processes and digital techniques of production and distribution. The student is introduced to the historical and current cultural implications of the production and distribution methods of text and image. This involves the student developing an artistic practice that is grounded in a conscious addressing of the specifics of artistic speech. Experimenting with analogue and digital (re)production processes and techniques is central to this, as is a continuous investigative practice of drawing.

Second and third bachelor

In the second and third bachelor year the production possibilities and processes are further explored from an increasingly explicit search for the peculiarity of artistic speech in a graphic context. The three focuses (Reproduction and Art, Mass Media and Art, and Artists’ Books) guide the exploration of the perspective that can be opened from the arts on current mass media (visual) culture.

Students are thereby encouraged to develop an artistic practice that can be situated in the most diverse domains of image and text production: books, online projects, texts, printed image series, drawings, collages,…