The Bachelor’s degree course seeks to support students in developing an original visual language through artistically productive engagement with all forms of analogue and digital graphics and photography. It focuses on the development of an experimental openness for the interdependence between texts, image, film and objects in analogue and digital space and which is characteristic for the department.

In their choice and combination of media forms, processes and representations, students are encouraged to question and push the boundaries of their medium. For example, they are encouraged to produce compositions in which graphic or photographic elements appear alongside other media in installations, prints, projections or digital spaces. Learning on the degree course is structured by students’ completion of an artistic development project, in which they work independently or in groups to develop their individual artistic vision through the interplay of practical and conceptual work and relate it to current artistic positions.

The course supports students in reflecting on their artistic vision. By entering into a discourse with a wide range of cultural contexts, they are encouraged to contribute to cultural development. The wide range of international cooperation programmes and exchange formats maintained by the HFBK provide our students with opportunities for intercultural encounters and a change of perspective. The fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of the degree courses taught at the HFBK enables our students to engage with related artistic and academic disciplines.

Students are encouraged to take advantage of the considerable academic freedom extended to them to make use of the well-equipped HFBK workshop facilities. Here, they can gather valuable experience in various fields, such as reprographic technology, printing technology and interface or web design. Supplementary courses enable students to explore a range of issues of art theory, history and method. Relating this to their own experience, students are able to develop their artistic approach and historical understanding.

In addition to providing an opportunity to produce artistic works, the course enables students to develop communication and discussion skills tailored to the institutional and social context of the art sector. The annual HFBK exhibition, its in-house gallery, material publishing house and a wide range of partnerships with institutions, civil society actors and digital networks offer the opportunity to test and discuss issues of image/art presentation and reception. Workshops and guest lectures involving international artists, academics and other universities ensure that HFBK students remain at the heart of the international artistic discourse.

Students of the Master’s degree course are encouraged to develop their unique individual artistic expression within their selected specialism within the wider context of contemporary art and design. The experimental openness for the relationships between texts, image, film and objects in analogue and digital space characteristic for the department enables its students to engage in the level of independent artistic and academic work and research requisite to completion of the degree.

To this end, students are tasked with working individually or as part of a group to conceive, realize and discuss an artistic project exploring contemporary and diverse historical forms of graphics, typography, digital graphics and photography. Students of the course are encouraged to take advantage of the considerable academic freedom extended to them and the value placed on interdisciplinary working practices to make use of the well-equipped HFBK workshop facilities. Here they have the opportunity to situate their own endeavours in a wider context through practical experimentation.

Our international exchange programmes and projects are especially valuable in this regard and give students on this Master’s degree course the opportunity to reflect on the position of their perspective in a wider intercultural context, thereby developing it. Supplementary courses taught in the Department of Theory and History enable students to explore a range of issues of art theory, history and method through which they are able to extend and refine their artistic approach and historical understanding.

Projects focusing on the communication and discussion of and reflection on art, organized with a range of partners from outside the university, enable students to explore the immediate relationship between art and society. Students gather further experience in this area through their involvement in the annual HFBK exhibition, the HFBK gallery, with material publishing house and through participation in workshops with international guests.