News

Graduation Show 2018, Review

Willem de Kooning Academy
Mon 9 Jul

The Graduation Show 2018 was a great success! With around 6100 visitors in five days, the event will be remembered as an innovative, original and incredible showcase of graduation projects created by our talented Bachelor and Master students.

 

The concept of the Bachelor graduation show was to divide the students’ projects based on the chosen Practices (Autonomous, Social or Commercial). Thus, in each section, you could see the projects from different disciplines. This blurring cross-fertilisation between majors reflects how we have trained our students within one of three professional practices.

Regarding the exhibition of the Piet Zwart Institute master students, all of the graduates share an interest in the complex underpinnings of their disciplines and therefore have provided variety around the Graduation Show's environment.

 

What the students have delivered was astonishing: installations, performances, board games in one space and then photographs, clothes and technologic items in the one next to it. You can surely say that the Willem de Kooning Academy has become a hybrid of various art and design paths full of well-thought and inspiring works.

After the Opening Night on the 4th of July, the exhibition continued the next day with the inspiring FIN Festival, showcasing all the short films of the Audiovisual Design graduates, and a presentation by the PZI Master Media Design: Experimental Publishing groups at UBIK and Slash Gallery (Worm).

Then, on July, the 6th there has been a lot going on in the Academy (and outside!): from projects’ presentations and awards to symposia, so every kind of visitor found something interesting to join and enjoy.

The highlights of this dynamic day were surely the Drempelprijs ceremony and the End of the Year Graduation Pre-Party hosted by the PING PONG CLUB on the rooftop of the Academy.

Finally, on Saturday and Sunday, there were various events highlighting Design Research presentations and the Hybrid Publishing celebratory books' launch, followed by the Research & Hybrid Publishing Awards ceremony.

Needless to say, the Graduation Show 2018 will stick not only in the memories of the graduates but also in the ones of the visitors and the team that had helped to organise this event.

We'd like to give a very special shout-out to the second year  Graduation Show 2018 Design Team, who have created this year's Graduation Show identity and routing & signing.

We wish our freshly graduated Creating Pioneers good luck in all their future endeavours and thank everyone who has come to support them!

Cover image: Jasper van Doorn, graduation project. Photography Aad Hoogendoorn