Master Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts

The Master programme Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts at Zurich University of the Arts (two years, 120 ECTS-Credits) links various disciplines in the arts and design, the sciences and society. It enables students to work in cooperative constellations and develop suitable processes and formats based on interdisciplinary methods.

Numerous problems of contemporary society transcend disciplinary structures and require methods that take into account different disciplines and perspectives. The practice-based Master programme supports students to position themselves at such interfaces and integrate artistic processes and/or aesthetic strategies into transdisciplinary constellations and projects. It takes individual profiles and subject areas as a starting point for the transdisciplinary expansion of established art forms and disciplines and for connecting theoretical positions with innovative forms of practice.  

The following three approaches designate fields of content to which the courses of the master’s programme are aligned. They outline figures of thought and subject areas in which disciplinary orders are questioned, broken up or transcended.

Other places, other ways of working, other publics: Theatre makers leave the stage and work in the landscape, visual artists form collectives and create meeting spaces in social hotspots, musicians deal with natural and everyday sounds and seek an audience outside of concert halls. The boundaries between the disciplines are marked by rules that materialise in traditional divisions of labour and defined spaces. These rules are up for discussion. The approach focusses on the critique of institutional frameworks and the hierarchies and exclusionary effects associated with them. The debate centres on how to work with spatial, social and natural-cultural conditions, how to involve the previously excluded and how to form alternative ecologies and economies. Questions about concepts of authorship or experimenting with different forms of collaboration—also with non-human actors—are part of this approach.

Forms of knowledge and thought practices in the arts and elsewhere: Knowing the possibilities and limits of one’s own discipline, questioning one’s own certainties and contextualising them is an essential basis for transdisciplinary project work. A transdiscinplinary approach is based on the diversity and equality of different worldviews and investigates types of knowledge that contribute to orientating oneself in the present and facing its problems under various circumstances. Courses with this approach look at the critically assessed supremacy of scientific and supposedly objective knowledge, ask about the politics of dominant and marginalised forms of knowledge, negotiate the position of art and aesthetics in the formation, organisation and distribution of knowledge and test possible connections between theoretical work and artistic practice.

Mediators and hybrids: figures of the in-between: Anyone who works transdisciplinarily shifts artistic and creative processes, techniques and formats, media and ways of speaking or concepts into other contexts where they have to be (re)negotiated and scrutinised for their transferability. In the course of such transfer processes, a nebulousness arises that can hardly be grasped with the usual categorical grids. The focus is on constellations with the prefix “trans-” that transcend disciplinary, specialised, medial or culturally influenced paradigms, bring these paradigms into negotiation or mediate between them. In this approach, concepts, projects and formats are discussed and tested that defy categorisation into defined genres and thus open up new spaces for thought and negotiation.

Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) is a vibrant center for teaching, research, and production. While firmly anchored in Greater Zurich, our influence extends well beyond Switzerland to the wider international stage. We offer a broad range of degree programs in education, design, film, art and media, dance, theatre, music, and transdisciplinarity. Closely interrelating teaching and research, we provide an ideal setting for transdisciplinary projects. Committed to bridging higher education, professional practice, and the interests of the wider public, we showcase the work and achievements of our faculty and students in our own exhibition spaces, theatres, and various dance and concert halls.