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Scenography for the study year 2025/2026

Admission Examination

Online registration and upload at: www.akbild.ac.at/admission from January 1 until January 20 2025

The admission examination aims to ascertain whether somebody is sufficiently talented for the central artistic subject.

The examination consists of two parts.

Admission examination WS 2025/26

1st part:

IN THE BASEMENT / CELLAR

A cellar (from the Latin “cella”); also known as a "basement", "cellar floor" or "basement") is an enclosed part of a building that is located entirely or at least predominantly below ground level. The original purpose of the cellar was to store food in a cool environment, as a cellar has a more even temperature than a building above ground. However, due to advances in the development of refrigeration technology, this significance of the cellar has faded into the background.

There are different types of cellars: house cellars, raised cellars, deep cellars, crawl spaces, perforated cellars, rock cellars, fieldstone cellars, earth cellars and prefabricated cellars, which can be used in a variety of ways: For storage, as a laundry cellar, hobby cellar, party cellar and much more.

Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl has made a documentary film about the obsessions that people pursue in their cellars. These range from model railways, snake keeping, Nazi gatherings, SM studios (sex cellars) and other passions of all kinds.

In „The Cellar“, Thomas Bernhard describes his apprenticeship as a salesman in a cellar shop in the poor neighbourhood of Salzburg during the post-war period and in the South Korean film Parasite by Bong Joon-ho, the cellar beneath an upper-class villa plays a special role as a parallel world.

For some people, a cellar is a dark, sinister place where things are suspected to originate from deep within the unconscious.

On 25 March 1996, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, a prominent Hamburg businessman, was beaten and abducted outside the door of his house in Hamburg-Blankenese. For 33 days, his kidnappers held him captive in the basement of a rented house near Bremen; he was only released after paying a ransom of 30 million Deutschmarks, an unprecedented sum in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. He later published his experiences in the book “Im Keller”. Reemtsma commented on this as follows:

"You don't leave that (the experience) behind in the cellar. Because you don't leave the cellar behind. The cellar will remain in my life, but as little as possible of the intimacy forced upon me there should remain in my life. The only remedy for intimacy is publication."

Tasks:

  1. Try to capture the term „cellar“ in a model, or construct a cellar that makes one or more levels of meaning tangible or visible. These can of course be other themes, images or aspects of the cellar than the examples given above. Translate experiences that you have had yourself or that you associate when you hear the term cellar into drawings, photos and a model.
  2. Write a short text in which you explain the content of your realisation.
  3. Send a CV and a letter of motivation in which your motivation to study stage design becomes clear.
  4. Send a digital portfolio with a selection of your work.

Submittal of the text, the portfolio and the assignment from January 1 until January 20, 2025 at www.akbild.ac.at/zulassung 

Please submit your files in pdf format and mark each file with your family name. E.g.: Introduction_Xxx, Portfolio_Xxx, Assignment_Xxx

Candidates eligible for the admission examination will be notified by E-Mail on March 3 (20 h), 2025.

2nd part:

  • Only for candidates admitted to the 2nd part:
  • From Monday, May 19 through Thursday, May 22, 2025 at the Scenography Department, Lehargasse 8, 3rd floor, A-1060 Vienna

Only candidates who pass both parts of the exam will be admitted to study at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Announcement of the candidates admitted: Thursday, May 22, 21 h by E-Mail

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna actively supports the application of people with disabilities and strives to create an admission examination as accessible as possible. Applicants may contact the responsible person, Christina Fasching in the Student Welcome Center with their questions via email to studentwelcome@akbild.ac.at.

Language Competency

Language requirements for the admission exam: The admission exam can be done either in German or English. Applicants who do not speak English or German can bring a translator to the oral exam (interview with the professors), detailed information will be submitted within the admission procedure.

Language requirements for students: After passing the admission exam and enrolling as a regular student/degree student, our students have two semesters time to achieve German on level B2. Before enrolling for the third semester (after one year of studies), our students have to prove German knowledge by presenting an official certificate for level B2 at our Registrar’s Office or by passing the Academy’s German course for level B2.
For further information see: www.akbild.ac.at/en/studies/general-study-information/language-competency

As a major part of our courses/lectures are held in German or German/English, it is essential to speak and understand German.

Informations