Orientations at erg

Visual and Graphic Communication

Videography

Typography

Sculpture

Photography

Painting

Installation - Performance

Illustration - Comics

Graphic design- Experimental and critical practices

Drawing

Digital arts / Coding

• Animated film

Bachelor 1 & 2

Professors: Nicolas Marcon, Alexander Schellow

What is – or better: what productively can be framed as animation? Here the concept of animation is as well a driving force as it is itself very much in question. Conceptually and methodologically we aim to reformulate a commonly rather technical understanding of animation (understood exclusively as a sub-genre of film, realised by a canonic, even though expanding body of defined techniques which can be „taught“ to the students) towards an expanded animation. ‚Expanded‘ means that animation is understood primarily as a field of transmedial artistic practices which can encompass means from drawing to writing to performance or video work, as well as cooking or urbanistic research. Therefore our students such as our collaborators in and outside the school have various backgrounds and work within various fields. In the process of sharing works within the department, ‚animation‘ serves as a counterpoint and field of operations/references in relation to which an approach can be (re)framed. The term does not fulfill a pre-existing definition, but formulates every time anew what animation can be. This has a huge impact on the teaching/learning methodologies: it is not that the techniques make up a body of knowledge that is passed on to the students. But the work consists – practically from the beginning in BAC01 on, and more and more intensified towards BAC03 and MA – in identifying together the concepts, concerns and related demands of what is slowly shaping as each student’s project. Those are explored in close discussion with the teachers, but also in feedback-constellations with other students, that transgress the borders between Bachelor-, Master- and Phd-students, and namely between student- and teacher-position, towards an open form of collaboration. Such primarily multi-individual path is accompanied by collective propositions: regular workshops and interventions by external visiting artists allow for perspectives and practical experiences within different “worlds” of developed animation or animation-related practices. Other, not obligatory formats further productively blur the borders of a pedagogical framework, of what is considered to happen in school: open screenings and regular collective work-dinners (“colloquia”) hosted in different private apartments, or occasionally works ‚on site’ as factual displacements – such as for example a past workshop in Tirana in collaboration with an Albanian urbanist university-faculty. So what is animation? We address this question not only as a work-internal and/or technical concern, but eminently as a shifting concept, that has to be shaped through and within the very frame of a shared working space – In the collective decision and realization of its aesthetical, pedagogical and political distinctions. [A selection of some traces of student works realized in the department can be discovered here: https://vimeo.com/channels/experimentalanimationerg ]

Presentations, analyses and collective discussions around examples taken from animated film and other subjects related to animation (performance, architecture, visual arts, etc.) that show a singular approach of "image by image” cinema. Beyond practical features (the breaking down of movement, layout, drawings, animation, rhythm, division, the relationship with soundtrack, etc.), this course aims at exploiting its potential in order to accompany a singular content and to experiment with various animation techniques.

Bachelor 3

Professor(s): Alexander Schellow

Presentations, analyses and collective discussions around examples from animated film and other subjects related to animation (such as performance, architecture and visual arts) that show a singular approach of "image by image” cinema. The workshop aims at learning the practical processes of animation by using diverse approaches and techniques. The objective is to encourage students to discover the numerous animation techniques and the meaning that they convey.

• Comics

During the three Bachelor years in comics and illustration at erg, students gradually resolve a series of issues around storytelling and narrative structuring. Starting from their appetence for image and writing, their personal interests and aims, students are encouraged to blend their reflections, practical skills and intuitions to create a personal and unique production. Through a regular practice, they will question the ethical and aesthetical challenges of their tool(s) and their impact on their statement by using an extensive knowledge of what makes graphic literature today.

Bachelor 1

Professors: Geneviève Casterman, Christian Staquet

The course looks at the challenges of common text-image relationships in the field of comics and illustration. It is divided in two workshop sessions: the first looks at the documentary aspect of narrative (relationship with “real world”) while the second is focused on fiction. The objective is to acquire a practice of drawing, image, writing and information collection according to the project.

Bachelor 2 & 3

Professors: Olivier Grenson, Joanna Lorho

Through practical exercises in order to serve a personal, authorial project, highlighting the language of the narrative image and the relationship between text and image. All year through, the course will rely on a history of illustration and comic books through films, books, albums and multimedia narratives, etc. This cultural environment, as well as brief or longer-term exercises, supports students in their personal research, which becomes particularly more intense during the course of the third Bachelor year.