Weißensee Kunst-Hochschule Berlin
Exams, documents, portfolio
Here’s what my enrollment plan looked like when I was at the very beginning of my way.
Now, when I have just a couple months before I enroll, this plan and me have gone through all sorts of scrapes and looks like this.
The first school where I passed the entrance exams was Weißensee in Berlin.
From January 2 to January 30, one had to register for the entrance exam and fill in an application form with general information and contact details. Then one would get an invitation to the exam and the theme for homework projects. This year’s theme was spying. The letter also contained a strong request not to use the most obvious solutions and interpretations, on the contrary — to be free in techniques, technologies and images used. I happily forgot about the letter as soon as I received in it in late January thinking that things will straighten out naturally and in time. Now I ask myself: why on earth I was so cheeky.
Applicants had to come to Berlin with their homework projects and portfolios on February 17 and hand over all their treasures for pre-selection, after which as few as 35 people out of about 300 would be invited to attend two-day practical tests. The project content was described as follows — from 15 to 20 self-made artworks, preferably related to the field of visual communications. Photographs, drawings, sketches, paintings, posters — anything. All digital works had to be stored on a separate carrier with a description of its contents attached. Neither sculpture nor huge canvases were welcome (but photos of sculpture were).
As you might expect, I finished my homework project the day before I had to submit it, because it occurred to me that I had to completely change it, which equaled my hopes, but didn’t justify the stress I made myself go through. To cover the topic of spying, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and chose myself as the object for spying, thus combining it with all the information about myself that I wanted to show the Commission. It was done in haste, but I was pleased with the result. We were not limited in the ways of project implementation, so I created a blog using available services, and photoshopped a couple missing pictures, while many applicants made posters, or, for example, made talks on the concept of surveillance for people in cities. You can find my project here — case5056.tumblr.com
On February 18, I went to see my very first admission result and with delight found myself on the list. For the exam, one needed to bring all sorts of things that would help with creating exam projects — paints, brushes, paper, scraps for collages, ink, markers, transparencies, laptops, cameras and phones. It sounded scary. At the bottom of the list of the admitted applicants I found a request to bring a scarf or a shawl. The aim was not stated.
From now on, I will write all the tasks for the entrance exams as they were given to me, translating them into English (I still have Lena to help me with the translation), and then I will show you how I performed them. In case I have no exact text of a task or taking pictures of the exam papers was prohibited, I will write them from my memory.
This is why we were requested to bring a scarf, and according to the words of the exam board — to relieve stress as well. Holding this picture in our hands, we entered the class for an interview with professors.
1. Visual story.
We were given a photograph of Jeff Wall, which was supposed to be the first one in a visual story of at least 12 A5 pages. We were independent in choosing the rest of the stuff — the topic, materials, visualization. We could use everything — computers, the Internet, scanners, printers, cameras and so on. We had enough time — from 10 AM to 16 PM.
From the very beginning, I managed to relax, so I had fun coming up with a story about how the process of remembering a word forgotten in the middle of a conversation looks like.
2. Written assignment
We were offered to write an essay with our arguments about the place of digital media and social networking in our lives.
3. Ipad Application
The first task of the second exam day was creating an app for children to learn alphabet featuring a non-standard format. All the functionality and interactivity were to be presented on one or more A2 sheets, the applicants could only draw and write captions. Without thinking twice, I mixed a bunch of ideas available to one and got a sweet mix of drawing, animals, funny sounds and using the external iPad environment.
4. Poster
The topic for it was Leipzig Book Fair, but it had a peculiarity — the poster had to attract the target audience, which did not care about book fairs.
In fact, these two days were extremely interesting because goodly stress and challenging time limit work like a charm to me, so I was very happy and now I think that these exams were the most productive of all that I have ever had. At the interview, I told the board that I had been studying this field and that I wanted to continue my education in the sphere of interactive media due to the lack of practical skills. Two weeks later I received a letter stating that I was accepted!
After that, I got into an epic concerning documents, which lasted several months, but the main experience that I have learned from it, after having been late, having made a thousand calls, having used fax for the first time, having double-attested all my documents and having spent a lot of money — there are people on the other side, too. If one logically explains and proves that the fault is not his or her, everybody will understand it and agree to wait as long as necessary. A few weeks ago, I finally got my first and long-awaited admission card!
