Fast Track MFA -> Studio PhD at the Transart Institute

PhD STUDIES
Transart is offering the first international low-residency studio PhD course of studies: A 3 year minimum, full time degree program with an average work commitment of 30 hours per week. The Degree is only offered for practice-based research (creative work) accompanied by a written thesis with a word count to be agreed upon with advisors. Advisors will come from Transart Institute and Plymouth University. Advisors will come from Transart and from Plymouth University.

THE MFA CREATIVE PRACTICE
consists of three intensive summer residencies in Europe filled with lectures, workshops, critiques, seminars, performances and exhibitions and two shorter winter residencies in New York City. In the four semesters between residencies, students create an individual course of study realizing art and research projects with the support of faculty and studio advisors wherever they work and live.y.

FAST TRACK MFA -> PhD
Exceptionally focussed and accomplished artists can apply for transfer from the MFA to the studio PhD program within the first year of the MFA. Students who wish to enroll in the Fast Track program need to 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.

PhD PROPOSALS
Transart is particularly keen on 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.

ADMISSIONS REQUIREMENTS
A master’s degree in a related field, MFA preferred.
The application process is detailed online.

TUITION AND FEES
Application fee: $50
Tuition PhD: GBP 5,375 / $8,540* per semester (minimum of four)
Bench fee: $3,000 per semester
Tuition MFA: $9,760 per semester (two or four)
All other fees included in semester tuition
* based on current exchange rate

SCHOLARSHIPS
Limited Assistantships are available through enrollment in the PhD program. These Assistantships cover up to $12,000 of tuition over three years. One 50% developing country scholarship is available this year on the PhD program. Partial scholarships are also available on the MFA Creative Practice.

Finances
Funding letters are mailed with acceptance into the program. Plymouth University is certified by the US Department of Education (DoE) as an eligible foreign school. Students are now able to apply for Sallie Mae International private student loans, school code: 023521. (Note: FAFSA and Stafford loans are not an option for this UK validated program.)

The Transart Experience
Transart Students are emerging and mid-career artists and educators. Transart residencies are a meeting place for cultural exchange. Transart students and alumni will converge for the summer residency from areas as diverse as Thailand, Egypt, Italy, Pakistan, Iceland, Croatia, Ethiopia, Canada, Costa Rica, the UK and the US.

For many students the time at Transart is a transformational experience. Performer and painter Nicole Stager wrote: “This program has changed my life in profound ways. My art practice is more informed, better articulated, more open, more thoughtful, more grounded in theory.” New York 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”. Photographer and performer Angelika Rinnhofer found that “to work independently can pose a challenge but it also offers freedom and flexibility. Since a large number of students are accomplished artists and earn a living, Transart’s concept is ideal to work toward a degree and to expand one’s artistic career in addition to having a job.” Faculty Michael Bowdidge: “Undertaking a PhD has lead me to a much deeper understanding of the nature of my practice. You can learn more about the experiences of Transart members online.

Summer Program Highlights

Reciting Sites, a seminar with Andy Warhol grant recipient Myron Beasley that contemplates and interrogates the cultural politics of public art and its construction of Memory and history with performance theory.

Remembering Spaces, a workshop team-taught by Deborah Aschheim and Lisa Mezzacappa, dedicated to how we experience spaces with our bodies and senses, how we remember these embodied experiences and how we can devise new ways of observing, recording and recreating spatial experiences that get at the deeper truth of the phenomenological and narrative experience.

Urban Poetics, a seminar with curator Radhika Subramaniam is concerned with that ephemeral notion “the urban experience” and how it is brought into being, a historic process and a deeply sensual one. The elements of space, time, memory, subjectivity, and perception that have created it and continue to do so have also constructed an urban way of knowing. Exploring the questions, What are the urban knowledges produced by these ways of knowing? How do urban practices frame our ways of seeing and being? How do these habituate us and influence the ways in which we inhabit cities? close reading, experiments, performance, listening, walking, and a deep exchange and intersection with one’s artistic practice will occur.

The full summer program is online.

General information: www.transart.org
For questions or to make an appointment to speak with faculty please contact: Drew Henmi:

Transart Institute
Mail: 228 Park Ave. S. New York, NY 10003, USA
Ph: +1 (347) 410 9905
Skype: transartinstitute
www.transart.org