University of the Arts Helsinki
Master of Arts in in Live Art and Performance Studies (LAPS)
Helsinki, Finland
DURATION
2 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Request earliest startdate
TUITION FEES
EUR 5,000 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* annual tuition fee for students who study in English and who are not citizens of the EU, EEA or Switzerland
Introduction
A full-time, two-year master’s program in English that uniquely combines performance theory with live art and performance art.
Why choose us?
Live Art and Performance Studies (LAPS) is a two-year master’s program in English that combines critical thinking with experimentation in artistic work and artistic research. It empowers its students to develop and activate new knowledge in performance and theory. It is one of the very few master’s programs in the world that focuses on the intersection of performance studies and the practice of live art/performance art.
About the program
The LAPS program provides an interdisciplinary approach to performance art / live art and performance studies, which is reflected in the diverse fields of our lecturers, mentors, visiting artists, and theorists. LAPS is partly constructed around rotating 1-to-1 mentorships and includes group seminars in areas of core knowledge, art criticism, actionism, and live art.
The program focuses on questions concerning the future potential of performance art in the context generally termed post-human. Its unique aim is to look into ways to practice and research performance art, performance studies, and artistic research in this context. The program’s ethos focuses on the exploration of performance as a mode of inquiry into contemporary performance — the possible futures, ecologies, technologies, cultures, and economies of performance. These themes are widely explored over the duration of the two-year program, with an emphasis on the critical evaluation of the contemporary moment through artistic practice and research.
The LAPS program collaborates with other programs at Uniarts Helsinki. It also has well-established links with other initiatives in the art field in Finland. These networks and collaborative projects help to develop students’ creative practice and research across many institutional and cultural contexts. Such collaborative environments may consist of projects carried out together with other MA students in Uniarts on digital environments, festivals, or opportunities to develop research practice with Doctoral studies programs in the field of artistic research. The program has a strong network of international partner institutions that allow for student exchanges as well as a wide roster of artists, lecturers, visiting scholars, and other experts who together create a vibrant learning environment in Helsinki.
Teachers
Our lecturers are experienced professionals in their field. In addition to our permanent staff, you will be taught by visiting lecturers, mentors, and artists who represent a diversity of fields in arts and humanities.
Ideal Students
The LAPS program empowers its students to develop and activate new knowledge in performance and theory. The applicants may already have a foundation in live art or performance art, but are now interested in performance studies and want to develop their discursive research skills alongside their artistic practice, or they may have already carried out research in another field in the humanities, but want to focus more on e.g. embodied practices of performative research. Therefore professionals from a wide range of fields, including people from non-academic or activist backgrounds, are encouraged to apply.
Program Outcome
- Having completed the LAPS program, students will have the ability to work as professional artists in their chosen fields and to disseminate and present their practice and research in relevant public fora.
- They will be able to contextualize their practice within relevant theoretical discourses and reflect critically upon performance practice and its audiences.
- Given that performance itself is a rather fluid concept and the nature of its practice and research is experimental, students will gain confidence in making creative and critical decisions within indeterminate and provisional situations.
- They will be able to demonstrate the ability to maintain exploratory performance and research practices in relation to curatorial, managerial, and institutional requirements and demands.
- Students will have the capacity to work in the wide array of individual and collective forms that are required in the professional field of contemporary art.
Curriculum
LAPS combines critical thinking with practice-led research and seeks to flesh out synergies between research and practice. The program’s lecturers, mentors, visiting artists, and theorists provide diverse approaches to the field, which include, but are not limited to: visual culture, gender studies, performance philosophy, performative research, embodiment, community-based practice, anthropology, mediated performance, performative writing, or the political theory of performance and activism. These approaches provide practical and theoretical tools for students in the context of performance studies and artistic research after the post-humanist turn.
Admissions
Program Tuition Fee
Scholarships and Funding
Please visit the university website for more information.