ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the Bologna Process, former schools of arts and crafts were turned into universities. This chapter discusses some of the changes that were subsequently observed taking place in Switzerland. While in earlier times artists attended college in order to learn or improve their artistic craft, the Bologna reforms have resulted in art students being increasingly confronted with a complex, transdisciplinary study program, including research methodologies, theoretical courses and a focus on writing. This chapter elucidates how the universities of the arts today often use the notion of the ‘experimental’ to describe some of the hitherto uncharted territories and practices that emerged after the reforms. On an institutional level, the experimental is observed in inspiring study programs and teaching content. On the level of professors’ and students’ practices – which can be encountered by looking into courses and writing practices – the experimental plays out in multifaceted endeavors that strive to find novel ways of working. Structural changes in higher education in the arts, such as the Bologna reforms, are here understood as a large-scale phenomenon (Nicolini 2017: 107) that can be investigated by zooming in on ‘situated accomplishments of practice’ and, at the same time, by zooming out to observe their relationships with a specific historical-social event.
