MFA Creative Practice
Practice-based PhD
The Transart Experience
- Summer intensives in Berlin, winter residencies in New York City
- Low-residency format allows to keep professional and family obligations while advancing career
- Workshops, seminars, professional development, studio and performance tours in every residency
- A highly individualized contemporary learning experience without grades
- Realizing creative projects with the support of curators, faculty and self-chosen advisors
- International makeup of students and faculty that fosters exchange across cultural boundaries
- Offsite study, critiques and advisement wherever you live and work
The MFA Creative Practice
is a student-centered, project oriented postgraduate art program which fosters independent thinking, risk-taking and the creation of an informed and sustainable art praxis. The program is tailored to suit the needs of working artists with summer residencies in Berlin, winter residencies in New York and one-on-one advisement during the academic year, wherever students work and live. Students are free to pursue work in any art-related genre and to create their own course of study, working independently and with the support of self-chosen studio and research advisors. Short periods of intensive residency permit students to continue with their professional work and keep a balanced personal life while participating in the program.
The Studio-Based PhD
Transart Institute is offering a low-residency PhD program for advanced studio art. The PhD at Transart is a three-year, full-time degree program with an average work commitment of 20–30 hours per week outside of residencies, validated by the University of Plymouth, UK. The degree is offered exclusively for practice-based research (creative work) accompanied by a written thesis. Transart is encouraging proposals that in the widest sense explore the archive, documentary art making; language/image; space, and inhabitation of space; software as art; network culture; the role of art making in peace, mediation and international relations; as well as performance. The proposal should demonstrate systematic study, independence, critical competence, and originality.
Fast Track MFA >> PhD
Exceptionally focused and accomplished artists can apply for transfer from the MFA to the studio PhD program at the end of the first year. Students who wish to enroll in the Fast Track program apply to the MFA Creative Practice. In their second semester on the MFA they develop a doctoral proposal. At the end of the semester they can apply for Fast Track assessment. Successful applicants will be registered for the MPhil/PhD course of studies at that time.
Finances & Scholarships
For PhD studies, graduates of the Transart MFA receive a 30% scholarship. The MFA application committee is authorized to award scholarships of up to 10,000 USD with acceptance into the program and up to 18,000 USD for citizens/residents of developing countries. Please note that Transart has no full scholarships. Assistantships will be discussed with accepted applicants. Additional financing should be available through sources in the student’s country of residence/citizenship. Private student loans are available via Sallie Mae International.
Transart Faculty
comes from a wide range of academic and artistic backgrounds as well as geographic locations. Current theoretical areas of expertise include curatorial work, cyberfeminism, African diaspora, interface technologies, digital arts, continental philosophy, media, social studies in colonialism, capitalism and tourism, word and image relationships, and contemporary Asian art history. Studio faculty include international artists working with sound, performance, dance and choreography, photography, drawing, sculpture, film and video, intervention and installation. Details and bios can be found on the website.
Transart Students
are emerging and mid-career artists and teachers at tertiary institutions. Students’ experiences at the Institute are unique and often transformational. NY based artist Virgil Wong found “the community I’ve become a part of through Transart is already much more immersive than what I’ve developed in ten years of living and working as an artist in New York City.” For composer and artist David Dunn “perhaps the most important aspect of the program, to me personally, has been the realization of just how constrained my professional life can be. I have no lack of colleagues or opportunities to present my work but my network of association tends to reinforce a particular set of intellectual and aesthetic assumptions that become ‘the’ set of assumptions. Transart succeeds at prying apart some of those entrenched viewpoints to provide space for new ideas and concerns. The truly international makeup of the students and faculty reinforces this.” More details online. You can learn more about the experiences other students have had at Transart.
Transart Institute
As the Unschool Art School, Transart grew out of a desire to go beyond established institutional education where pre-formed and pre-formatted knowledge is passed on to all students in the same way. Transart works the other way around: a plethora of models and diverse input in a multi-perspective environment form a truly student-driven program. The Institute is also a platform for faculty to expand their teaching praxis by making space for creativity and experimentation. Beyond its educational objectives, Transart is engaged in building an international community in support of students, alumni, faculty and their artistic and academic practices.
Application deadline for early consideration and remaining scholarships: February 1, 2013
Contact and further information
Subscribe to the monthly Transart MFA newsletter.
Subscribe to the occasional PhD newsletter.
For more information please visit the Transart website.
To schedule an appointment with faculty please email Drew Henmi: [email protected].
Transart Institute
Mail: 228 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10003
T +1 (347) 410 9905
[email protected]
www.transart.org
