What is reality?
During the interview for this text, sitting in the sun in a small park next to the HKU, the students listen to each other with admiration. ‘Wow, we really learned a lot. It’s not at all like how we talked about our researches in the first year.’ The Master of Scenography students started their journey with a research question and at the time of the interview, they were working on their final research documents. Some no longer remember their original question—so much has happened since then. ‘The first semesters is all about playful experimentation. You stretch the boundaries of your research question; you throw it away, burn it or hug it, whatever it takes to foster a kind of playfulness.’

You might start with a question like: how does light affect the perception of reality? And then a teacher will ask: but what is reality? ‘They show us new chains of thought.’ The students also found themselves in a new environment – the Netherlands – and in an international group full of people from diverse artistic backgrounds (most of whom were already professionals). Nearly every day, they were confronted with ‘questions and perspectives that we wouldn’t naturally consider ourselves.’ The course brought in guest lecturers, readings, exercises, and angles, but above all, ‘having a space where we could constantly be in dialogue with each other was perhaps the main engine for change and transformation.’

Productive friction
‘It is a very self-reflective course. Sometimes it’s a bit therapeutic in a sort of aggressive way, haha.’ Of course, there’s occasional friction when thirteen people are analyzing the same subject—but it’s always productive friction. ‘It can be a surprising moment when someone shares a thought on something you’re working on and you realize how short minded the thought you had was.’ It helps that they’re good friends and don’t feel obligated to constantly praise each other’s work. The group shares a common vocabulary—they’ve read the same literature, explored the DasArts feedback method, and gotten to know each other personally.

‘Like you’ve known each other for ages!’
At the beginning of their second year, they went on a ‘research retreat’ to Terschelling. As a group, they cycled against the wind, cooked ‘really cool dinners’ for one another, and played games. From the start, their studio (‘The Master of Scenography aquarium’) was their shared space. They celebrated birthdays in the black box, brought soup to sick classmates, and stayed at each other’s houses during family visits. In the very first week, while sitting at Café Klein Berlijn, someone approached them and said: ‘You guys look like such a nice group—like you’ve known each other for ages!’

Defining Scenography
Being a scenographer means something different to everyone—and it can be difficult to explain.

‘It depends on how you frame yourself, but also on the linguistic and cultural background of the person you’re talking to. So much comes together in that one term.’ The Master of Scenography shares a building with Fine Arts, yet even around the schoolyard, students are often asked what they do. ‘And being an artist was already hard enough to explain to my parents—let alone being a scenographer.’ They constantly have to redefine their practice, both for themselves and for those around them. ‘Who am I as a scenographer outside of this educational system, outside of performance—in the broader field of the arts, and also politically, in the world?’

The topics of their final research documents highlight the wide range of what scenography can be: exploring dreams, intimate contact with the non-animate world, creating beauty with industrial materials, familial relationships, collage with found materials, disrupted rhythms in spatial composition, playing with space like playing music, soil-based practices, inviting participants into intimate and consensual conversations, and spatial uncertainty.

The Class of 2025, of Master Scenography is:
Iara Banchik Almasia, Melisa Seren Celik, Alkmini Damianakou, Fatima Habib, Chris Handberg, Rym Hayouni, Azusa Huang, Noah Krejberg, Vera Morcillo Salgado, Krassi Sigurðsson, Douwe Teusink, Katya Timofeeva and Christianna Tsigkou.