Department of Art

About ViCCA

Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) is a two-year Master’s Programme at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture situated in the Greater Helsinki area of Finland. ViCCA’s goal is to optimise the working across disciplines, fields of research, and various occupations that is becoming a hallmark of our times. The programme considers visual culture, curating and contemporary art an agora in which conversations, negotiations, and articulations between theory, science, technology, ecology, urbanism, popular culture, economies and thinking around societal impact can be emboldened.
About ViCCA

Art, visual culture and the forms of organisation that go into making them public cannot be described as a mirror of society but rather they are and always have been an active agent in worldmaking. ViCCA takes up this perspective and works with students to diversify and develop their knowledge base while overseeing the synthesis of each student’s multiple interests into an approach or way of doing things. The programme explores emerging knowledges and practices and offers concrete opportunities to develop research abilities, methodologies and a sense for artistic and critical thinking. Learning from each other’s different professional backgrounds also plays an important role in the programme. ViCCA offers a frame of reference for the broadening of one’s professional identity and the tools to forge new ways of working.

The programme’s teaching staff represent a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds from artistic research on human and non-human ecologies to curatorial studies and philosophy, and from art practice and contemporary aesthetics to urban studies. ViCCA also provides opportunities to encounter guest lectures by a diverse array of thinkers and to tap into the resources on offer in a multidisciplinary university. We share a campus with the Schools of Science, Business, Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. This enables students to experiment with different paradigms of knowledge by extending their studies to include a broad variety of courses inspired by Aalto University's disciplinary scope. The university encourages cross-pollination of disciplines and provides students with opportunities to take advantage of the wider university framework.

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