An academic program is only as successful as its graduates
If you are interested to know what you can do with a Doctorate in Creative and Performing Arts, you are on the right page. Below you will find a few of our graduates and what the degree gave them in their career as a musician, visual artist or designer.
Riccardo Giacconi is an Italian artist, filmmaker and researcher who graduated at ACPA in 2019 with a thesis entitled ‘The Variational Mode. Three cases about documents, artworks and animation’. His dissertation dealt with acts of solitary, inarticulate and “pre-political” resistance, transmitted through outmoded narrative formats. He presents his works in exhibitions and film festivals. In 2019 he had a solo show at Grazer Kunstverein, as part of the steirischer herbst festival. He co-founded the collective listening festival Helicotrema and the audio storytelling studio Botafuego. Currently Riccardo is working at ACPA on his Post-doc research The ‘Option’ aftermath in South Tyrol.
With a background in documentary photography Andrea Stultiens developed a dissertation titled 'Ebifananyi. A study of photographs in Uganda in and through an artistic practice. The dissertation consists of a thesis, eight artist books and documentation of numerous exhibitions. Stultiens has since continued a research practice in which her artistic making, usually in collective constructions with others, is her research method. She currently works on a long term project that investigates the photographic legacy of a Dutch man whose documentation of -and narratives based on- journeys made to the African continent between 1932 and 1962 played a substantial role in the imagination of the African continent in the Netherlands of the mid 20th century. As an educator she is connected to the BFA and MFA programs of Minerva Art Academy in Groningen and the MFA Photography & Society at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
Viola player and artistic researcher Emlyn Stam graduated from ACPA in 2019 with his dissertation In Search of a Lost Language: Performing in Early Recorded Style in Viola and String Quartet Repertoires. His research into early recorded performance practices led to numerous speaking and concert engagements in the Netherlands, the UK, Switzerland, the United States and Portugal. He is currently working with the Mokum Symphony on experimental performances of orchestral and chamber music as part of a multi-year performing project. Emlyn became research coordinator for the Master of Music at Fontys University for the Arts in Tilburg and supervises Master’s students in both Tilburg and at the Hague’s Royal Conservatoire. He also continues his work as artistic director of NEuE, an ensemble devoted to 20th and 21st century music.
Thalia Hoffman is a visual artist and researcher working in film, video, performance and public interventions in the area she lives in, east of the Mediterranean. In 2020 she graduated at ACPA with the thesis “Guava, a conceptual platform for art-actions”. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and create possible techniques of art-actions that are part of her quest to continue to live in the conflicted landscape, as an artist. Alongside her artistic actions, Hoffman is a lecturer at the University of Haifa in fields of video, performance and artistic research for BA and MFA programs of the school of arts. All her work strives to be involved in its surroundings and engage people to look, listen and feel their socio-political landscape with attention. Hoffman’s films, video works and performances have been shown in exhibitions and festivals in Israel and around the world. Among them the Tel Aviv Museum of art, The Haifa Museum of art, Mamuta art centre in Jerusalem, Beit HaGefen Gallery in Haifa, The Jerusalem film festival, Experiments in Cinema Festival in New Mexico, Aesthetica Film Festival in the UK, and The Video-Art festival in Cairo.
In 2020, graphic designer Joost Grootens defended his project 'Blind Maps and Blue Dots: The Blurring of the Producer-User Divide in the Production of Visual Information', in which he investigated what contemporary mapmaking practices of amateurs and technology companies can reveal about the ever-evolving field of graphic design. The resulting book 'Blind Maps and Blue Dots' was published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2020. Next to running a graphic design studio in Amsterdam, Grootens is professor of artistic research in visual design at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.
