Academy of Media Arts Cologne

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The KHM logo looks like a black square. And that is what it is. But that’s not all that it is: there is much more to it! When the designers Uwe Loesch and Michael Wichelhaus created the logo for the newly founded academy in 1990, they chose a form that offers many possibilities to draw connections.
The history of art over the last century has been full of obsessions for the square: one ...thinks of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, Hans Richter’s early experimental films, Samuel Beckett’s television play Square, John Baldessari’s photo series Throwing four balls in the air to get a square etc. Squares have the advantage of being neither ornamental nor directional. As a neutral straight shape, neither portrait nor landscape, they illustrate the importance of each and every artistic decision concerning format (we are not limited to the big screen!).
If you look at the logo more closely, it also becomes clear that it differs greatly from Malevich’s Black Square. It does, in fact, have two sharp and two blurred edges. The black seems rich in contrast on the sharp edges, but diffuse on the blurred edges. From this perspective, the KHM logo turns out to be a test image for questions of perception. And there’s more: one knows, since Goethe’s Theory of Colours, that colour phenomena can appear at the border between black and white under certain light conditions (this can be tested on the edge of a window frame in the light of morning).
Our black square is therefore not only black, but also virtually coloured. The KHM logo thus touches on questions of design, art and film history, of format and perception. And if you enter the KHM address Filzengraben Köln in Google Earth, you will discover the following text written on a flat roof: WHITE GROUND BLACK SQUARE. Next to it is a square made up of smaller squares. It is the KHM’s QR code. So the logo returns technologically. The black square has arrived in the Information Age.
On October 15, 1990 with 25 students on the postgraduate “Audiovisual Media” diploma course; 1994 expansion of the course offering to include the undergraduate “Audiovisual Media” diploma course; since 2004 doctoral programme; 2010 renaming of the two diploma courses to “Media and Fine Art”.
According to § 1 paragraph 2 of the Kunsthochschulgesetz (Art Colleges Act) the KHM is a corporation under public law and an institution of the federal state of NRW. The responsible authority is the Ministry for Innovation, Science and Research of the Federal State of NRW with whom current agreements on goals and performance are agreed for respective periods of four years.
The Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) offers the demanding, project-based “Media and Fine Art” course, which gives each student the chance to choose between and individually combine various artistic emphases. The particularly experimental climate at the KHM facilitates independent artist work.
The “Media and Fine Art” diploma can be attained via a 9-semester (undergraduate) or 4-semester (postgraduate) course. The cornerstone of the “Media and Fine Art” course is the individual development of artistic projects.
The KHM accepts 70 to 80 new enrolments per winter semester, with an average of around 320 students in total, of which approximately one third are international students.
The Academy of Media Arts Cologne diploma is comparable internationally to a MFA (Master of Fine Art).
The Kunsthochschulgesetz (Art Colleges Act) provides the legal foundation for the KHM as well as six other art and music colleges in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The KHM’s doctoral programme offers the possibility to write a philosophical dissertation leading to a university-comparable, academically founded Doctor of Philosophy. A link to artistic praxis is prerequisite to admission. However, the assessment of the dissertation, in all of its elements, remains an academic one. The number of doctoral candidates admitted is between 15 and 20 per year.
The interdisciplinary approach to teaching and research, the on-going collaboration with other colleges, both domestically and internationally, with cultural institutions, festivals, exhibition organisers as well as the film and media industries paves the way for networks and activities in the areas in which students, doctoral candidates and fellows will work after their degree course: They work successfully, for example, both individually as well as in collectives, as artists, programmers, film directors, camera men and women, scriptwriters, designers, producers or in other self-employed roles. And a substantial number of them now pass on their competence in higher-education teaching roles.
Through the doctoral regulations adopted in 2004, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne offers the possibility to complete a philosophical dissertation in an intensely art-related context. The connection between artistic questioning and scientific methods in the KHM’s doctoral programme should lead to relevant new findings. In accordance with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia’s art college legislation, the degree awarded is the same as a university degree, i.e. an academic PhD.
The linking of research methods to artistic and media practices in the doctoral project is a prerequisite for admission, a closeness to artistic, media experimentation is desired and encouraged. However, the assessment of the dissertation, in all of its elements, remains an academic one.
By allocating the doctoral projects to specific working areas, supervision by the appropriate qualified doctoral teaching staff at the KHM is assured.
The dissertation is to be written in German. No scholarships can be awarded. Support in the writing of funding applications is offered.