Applications open on September 1, 2026
Dr. phil. in art. / PhD in Art Practice
In addition to the theoretical dissertation in written form or an artistic work accompanied by a theoretical text, leading to the degree of Dr. phil. in art, the HFBK offers the PhD in Art Practice—a degree program unique in Germany—in which a research-based artistic work is created as part of a three-year curriculum at the HFBK. The application periods for both doctoral programs begin on September 1.
Michal BarOr, Ruins 2, 2023
Dariia Kuzmych, From conversations about similarity of pain, 2024
Julia Stolba, Jelkas Traces. Making of a Graphic Novel, exhibition view, 2025; photo: Stefan Wahler
Helene Kummer, nemo 05, 2025
Vanessa Gravenor, Cover, Duck &, exhibition view Research for Tomorrow, 2023; photo: Răzvan Năstase Cercetare
Zhichao Zhu, Muddy Waters, DE/CN 2026, Filmstill
Johannes Büttner u. a.
Bianca Itte, Peter Lampe, Emilia Storgaard a.o.
5:00 pm
Academic Seminar: 3–5:30 p.m.
as part of the 4th Chinese Film Festival Hamburg
curated by Zhichao Zhu
7:00 pm
Lennart Münchenhagen, Anna Steinert u.a.
Filipe Lippe a.o.
7:00 pm
Karla Zipfel, Paula Erstmann u. a.
6:00 pm
Julia Tielke, Clara Umbach
Screening and Reading
more info
Workshop organisiert von Eva Horn (HIAS/Universität Wien) and Maximilian Hepach (Durham University)
Anmeldung unter event@hias-hamburg.de
Elisa Juri
Screening & Reading by Elisa Juri
Helene Kummer, Sara Hillnhütter, Jessica Ullrich, Terue Yamauchi, Bettina Uppenkamp, Antonia Ulrich
What does it take to shift from learning about the living world to learning from and with the living world?
The symposium invites us to consider artistic research as a relational practice of storytelling. Getting involved with the lives and stories of animals, trees, or the sea changes the temporalities and modes of research and art practice. Which active forms of engagement can open up spaces for mutual learning? What kinds of relationships emerge through accompanying and listening? Which stories do these relationships hold, and how can they be told?
Taking up ecologist Gary Nabhan’s reflection : “The restoration we need to do is also a re-story-ation” — the event gathers different perspectives and approaches that seek to tell more than only human stories. Together with the guests and participants we also want to discuss questions of responsibility and limits: How can these relationships become reciprocal? How to deal with the tension between relation and representation?
The PhD program “being(s)” invites to this one day event with Talks, a Film Screening and a performative walk.
Open for everyone, No registration needed.
Language: English
10:00–11:00
being(s) : More-Than-Human Drama
Introduction to the symposium and the research project ‘More-Than-Human Drama’ as part of the being(s) graduate school at HFBK.
In her artistic research, Helene Kummer examines the dramaturgical, linguistic, and aesthetic articulations of so-called “animals” in storytelling—particularly in animation -and how these representations shape human-animal relationships. Scratch marks from raccoons on the wooden structures of Japanese temples hold a multitude of stories and relationships. They are the traces of a popular animation production from the 1970s that influenced ways of seeing and treating these animals, which are considered invasive. Together with Terue Yamauchi, the two artists collect documents, stories, and relationships connected to these contexts and are developing a feature film.
Helene Kummer—PhD Candidate Art in Practice, HFBK
Sara Hillhütter—Officer for Artistic Practice, HFBK
11:00–12:00
Shared Worlds: Imagining Multispecies Futures
Shared Worlds explores how contemporary art functions as an experimental space for imagining and testing utopian futures beyond anthropocentrism. Art is framed as a speculative practice that challenges the status quo and anticipates alternative forms of coexistence with nonhuman animals. Through historical and contemporary case studies the lecture examines how art envisions, rehearses, and sometimes realizes multispecies communities. Central to the discussion are questions of animal personhood, agency, radical hospitality, and feminist ethics of care. The talk proposes an expanded concept of art that takes nonhuman aesthetic practices seriously and recognizes animals as collaborators and co-creators of worlds.
Prof. Jessica Ullrich - Kunstakademie Münster, Editor of ‘Tierstudien’ Publication
12:00–13:00
Ancestral Sea: Where Lives and Memories Reside
“Crossing Tides” (2018) emerged from a decade-long relationship with an elderly woman—the last remaining ama (sea women / female free diver) on an island between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, who embodied a life deeply attuned to the sea and its tides. In this talk, I will share a selection of key excerpts from the film and reflect on the process of its making, discussing how I came to understand that relationships—and their storytelling—are not something we can simply “make” or “develop,” but rather something that emerges organically over time through ongoing negotiation with constantly shifting, living elements, including the artist, participants, the environment, the weather, and all that it shapes.
Terue Yamauchi—Artist and Film Maker, Fukuoka (JP)
14:00–15:00
The Earth under Water: Images of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark in Medieval and Early Modern Art
Narratives of a life-destroying great flood belong to the mythological heritage of numerous cultures. This catastrophe is generally understood as a form of divine punishment for human guilt and sin. In the Old Testament, Noah, as the only righteous man, is instructed to build an ark and to save not only his family but also a pair of every kind of animal—both pure and unpure—”birds and livestock and every creeping thing” (Gen 8:17), in order to repopulate the earth after the flood. This lecture focuses on images from earlier periods of art history and, in particular, asks which species were deemed worthy of representation.
Prof. Bettina Uppenkamp—HFBK Hamburg
15:00–16:00
Perceiving Encounters: Kuhmühlenteich
Close to the HFBK Hamburg, at the intersection of city and river, lies a place of relations: the “Kuhmühlenteich”. This short, theoretically and sensually engaged walk is an invitation to perceive the living world at this specific place. The journey begins with a brief input that informs about the site’s layered history. It is followed by a ‘Reading Walk’ in which participants read short texts and discuss them with respect to the environment.
Antonia Ulrich - Institute for Arborphilia, Animals, Aesthetics and Activism (Hamburg)
In light of 60 years of film at the HFBK Hamburg, last year’s Cine*Ami*es film symposium explored friendship as a critical cinematic practice and examined how aesthetic independence is maintained through forms of connection between people, technologies, and environments.
A year later, Cine*Ami*es expands this horizon in collaboration with the Chinese Film Festival for Xin Zhu’s All Quiet at Sunrise. The film’s experimental form brings language, kinship, memory, and desire into a shared field. Within the framework of Cine*Ami*es, All Quiet at Sunrise emerges as a work that lends a precise cinematic texture to relationships. Thought, intimacy, and transmission unfold together. The screening draws attention to cinema as a practice through which fragile forms of connection become visible, audible, and shareable.
Following the film screening, we invite you to a roundtable discussion between Xin Zhu, Robert Bramkamp, and Elisa Linseisen, moderated by Ruby Chen.
Xin Zhu, All Quiet at Sunrise, 2025; Filmstill
with Abel Auer
Milan Skrobanek
Screening & Talk with director Milan Skrobanek
Charlotte Perka a.o. auf Montage
Harry Thring a.o.
7:00 pm
Harry Thring a.o.
7:00 pm
Artists: Ki Bui, Trieu Dao, Sina Eichhorst, Luzie Ana Catalina Katzorke, Willi Mend, Emiliano Mondragón, Josie Overton, Sude Nur Tosun, UWAGA2002 (Nika Genetika & Ella Kur & Alfons Nagel), Leonie Wahler, Aleit Wagenbrenner
Opening: April 16, 7 p.m. With a performance by UWAGA2002 (Nika Genetika & Ella Kur & Alfons Nagel)
Closing: May 3, 2026, 3 p.m. With a performance by the Working Class Daughters and a reading by Daniela Aparicio Ugalde
Time and again, the image of the precarious life of an artist collides with real economic conditions: for some, a phase of life marked by deprivation as a voluntarily chosen creative sacrifice; for others, a structural inequality that leaves little time and few resources for artistic work. This gives rise to ambivalence, irritation, and friction. A wide variety of starting conditions shape artistic processes, their perspectives, and aesthetic questions.
The term “classism” describes various forms of exclusion, devaluation, and inequality based on social background, economic conditions, or group affiliation. In the art and cultural sectors, these are particularly shaped by performance, habitus, the embodiment of patterns of action, and seemingly invisible codes, accompanied by feelings such as shame, anger, or insecurity. What might processes of appropriation, masking, and strategies for navigating a glass ceiling look like if they also addressed aesthetic concerns? What artistic means can make conditions of access or interpersonal solidarity visible, and reflectively interrogate social background in its various forms?
The exhibition Fake it till you make it at ICAT, Room 2, in April 2026 aims to examine the starting conditions of an artistic engagement, its visualization, and its aesthetics through artistic positions emerging from an open call. Fake it till you make it is part of the decentralized festival “Klassenreise – Aktionen zu sozialer Herkunft” (Class Trip – Actions on Social Background), featuring additional program events and venues in Hamburg in April and May 2026.
7:00 pm
Reading: “Hands”, from “When I get down on my knees” (2026), Daniela Aparicio Ugalde (auf Englisch)
Performative Lesung: “Working Class Daughters. Über Klasse sprechen”, Karolina Dreit, Kristina Dreit (auf Deutsch)
Karolina Babette Kaiser, Ruxin Liu, Clara Umbach
Karolina Babette Kaiser, Ruxin Liu, Clara Umbach
6 p.m.: Lecture Performance von Ruxin Liu
8 p.m.: Dinner
Laurel Chokoago, Aleen Solari, Sudabe Yunesi a.o.
6:00 pm
Music connects—people, stories, and sensory experiences. It has long been intertwined with the visual arts, whether through modes of presentation, compositional structures, or acoustic references. Bringing together artists associated with HFBK Hamburg, this exhibition explores the visual translation of music, its transformation into images, and its influence on form and relational structures.
The participating artists engage with sound, noise, and voice in distinct ways: as a fundamental reference, a point of departure, or an integral component of their artistic practice. As if each embodied a different instrument within an ensemble, they develop singular modes of expression. Yet in encountering the works, music itself remains absent—present, but not perceptible in acoustic form. Instead, it takes on a visual existence, articulated through painting, drawing, sculpture, and video.
Repetition is a central element in musical composition. The exhibition design echoes this principle through the use of acoustic panels that not only subtly alter the spatial acoustics, but also mimic and reiterate the formal qualities of the works on display.
Artists: Siri Hammarén, Tintin Patrone, Jorinde Voigt, Ronja Zschoche, students from the Stage Design class (HFBK) and the Multimedia Composition class (HfMT)
Opening with a concert by the Krachkisten Orchestra
7:00 pm
Mit David Huss und Felix Raeithel
Due to unforeseen personal circumstances affecting one of the participants, the event unfortunately cannot take place. A new date will be announced shortly.
In German language
Sophia Kennedy, geboren in Baltimore, USA, ist eine in Deutschland aufgewachsene Musikerin, die früh begann, eigene Stücke zu komponieren. Sie studierte in den 2010er Jahren Film an der HFBK Hamburg, widmete sich aber bald ganz der Musik. 2017 veröffentlichte sie ihr Debütalbum Sophia Kennedy bei Pampa Records mit internationaler Resonanz. 2021 erschien Kennedys zweites Album Monsters beim Label City Slang, gefolgt 2025 vom dritten mit dem Titel Squeeze Me, für das sie erneut mit ihrem langjährigen Kollaborator und Co-Writer Mense Reents zusammenarbeitete. Als Duo Shari Vari hat sie gemeinsam mit Helena Ratka 2019 das experimentelle Album NOW herausgebracht. Gelegentlich schreibt Kennedy Musik fürs Theater und wirkt an Hörspielproduktionen mit.
Dirk von Lowtzow, in Offenburg/Baden geboren, ist bekannt als Sänger, Texter und Gitarrist der 1993 in Hamburg gemeinsam mit Arne Zank und Jan Müller gegründeten Band Tocotronic. Nach vierzehn Studioalben erschien 2025 unter dem Titel Das Unglück muss zurückgeschlagen werden eine Auswahl der deutschsprachigen Songtexte als Reclam-Band. Dirk von Lowtzow schreibt Kunstkritiken und Katalogbeiträge und ist Mitglied des redaktionellen Beirats der Zeitschrift Texte zur Kunst. 2019 gab er mit dem Miniaturen-Abecedarium Aus dem Dachsbau sein Debüt als literarischer Autor; 2023 folgte mit Ich tauche auf ein tagebuchartiges Protokoll der Pandemiezeit; im Herbst 2026 wird im Verbrecher Verlag unter dem Titel Detektive eine Sammlung seiner kritischen Texte erscheinen.
Alexandra Friedrich wurde in Kassel geboren. Seit rund 20 Jahren arbeitet sie in ihrer Wahlheimat Hamburg als Kulturjournalistin: lange mit Fokus auf Popmusik – als Redakteurin und Moderatorin beim Webradio ByteFM und freie Autorin für verschiedene Medien, unter anderem Deutschlandfunk Kultur und das Missy Magazine. Als Radioredakteurin bespielt sie heute das ganz weite Feld der Kultur; dabei gilt ihr Hauptinteresse inzwischen der Literatur. Sie moderiert regelmäßig Lesungen, schreibt Buchkritiken und gehört zum Literarischen Beirat des Literaturbüros Lüneburg.
Künstlerisches Takeover von Studierenden der Klasse Bühnenraum (HFBK) und der Klasse Multimedia-Komposition (HfMT)
Leitung: Prof. Evi Bauer (HFBK), Cornelius Puschke, Prof. Alexander Schubert (HfMT)
With: Jacopo Asam, Luki Becker, Hülya Braasch, Giovanni Dinello, Sina Eichhorst, Saba Emadabadi, Alexa Glaser, Agustín Issidoro, Gabriel Abi Saber dos Santos, Mathilda Schmidt, Jiwon Seo, Rosa Thiemer, Henriette Weber, Ian Whillock
“Alone Together” marks the first edition of a long-term collaboration between the Stage Design program (HFBK) and Multimedia Composition (HfMT). Working in small, interdisciplinary groups, Master’s students from both programs develop installations and performances presented in the spaces of ICAT and the Stage Design studios.
The project takes its point of departure from the jazz standard “Alone Together” (1930s), which evokes the romantic longing to be alone together as a couple. From a contemporary perspective, however, the title also resonates with the emotional paradox of digital communication: a shared experience of loneliness.
Carolina Lehan
2:00 pm
Noémi Barbaglia, Christoph Blawert, Ulla von Brandenburg, Annika Kahrs, Nicole Wermers u. a.
Eröffnung: 19. Februar, 18 Uhr
Maggie Nelson is the author of many acclaimed books, most recently The Slicks (2025) and Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (2025). Previous works include Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024); the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021); the international bestseller The Argonauts (2015; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award); The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011); Bluets (2009; adapted for the stage at the Royal Court Theatre of London); and The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (2005). A recipient of a 2016 MacArthur “genius” fellowship, she is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
Ki Bui a.o.
7:00 pm
Max Pilger a.o.
2:00 pm
Julia Nordholz a.o.
3:00 pm
Jenny Schäfer a.o.
7:00 pm
Magdalena Los, Pablo Schlumberger
Magdalena Los & Pablo Schlumberger
7:00 pm
Omid Arabbay
6:00 pm
Marc Botschen, Iris Helena Hamers u. a.
Eröffnung: 28. Februar, 18 Uhr
Anselm Reyle
with Anne Duk Hee Jordan
with Yalda Afsah
Studio Softić, Samira Alizadehghanad, Farina Mietchen, Karola Pfaffinger, Jan Peters, Yaela Gottlieb a.o.
Samira Alizadehghanad, In Schuss und Kette der Nomaden, DE/IR 2025, 30 min.
Farina Mietchen, Hinterlegte Nummern, DE 2025, 20 min.
Karola Pfaffinger, Sehr geehrte Herrin, DE 2025, 53 min.
Jan Peters, 34 Jahre, aber den Sinn des Lebens habe ich immer noch nicht rausgefunden, DE 2026, 100 min.
Yaela Gottlieb, En otra Palestina, PE/DE 2026, 10 min.
4:00 pm
Clara Lena Langenbach
8:00 pm
Fabio Prosdocimis Smells Like Headlines in der HFBK Boutique
In the exhibition Smells Like Headlines, Fabio Prosdocimi directs the viewer’s attention to aspects of the urban landscape that often remain unnoticed within the rhythms of everyday life. Working with large-scale textile wall and floor objects, the artist constructs collages and sculptures from heavy-duty construction fabrics which, reminiscent of low-poly 3D models simulate familiar urban vegetation – trees, bushes, and shrubbery. Installed throughout the exhibition space, these forms create the atmosphere of an artificial greenhouse situated right in the heart of the bustling city: an oasis carved out in an environment where little nature finds room to unfold.
Prosdocimi’s interest in such aspects of urban planning is shaped by an intimate, everyday perspective. As the owner of two dogs, he approaches green urban zones less as decorative or ecological elements, and more like sites of communication and exchange. The title, “Smells Like Headlines”, refers to this: bushes and trees function as social interfaces where information is spread through scent, where sniffing and marking work the same way as headlines in newspapers – getting updated about what’s happening in the neighbourhood. Urban vegetation transforms into a network of organic “chat rooms,” revealing an alternative communicative layer, one that escapes the human perception.
6:00 pm
moderated by Anna Bochkova
Yalda Afsah
Bühnenbild: Jonathan Mertz
17./19./21./26./29.3. und 2./5./10.4.26
7:30 pm
Ona Lillet, Wie Zhu a.o.
Elena Bulycheva, Temorscha Zoltani, Nikita Kotliar a.o.
7:00 pm
11:00 am