Transart Institute is proud to announce our first low-residency PhD graduate Christopher Danowski. This June, Danowski officially completed his PhD in Creative Practice. Danowski’s thesis, The Medium and the Message: Afro-Cuban Trance and Western Theatrical Performance, investigates the incorporation of Afro-Cuban trance techniques in Western theatrical performance utilizing a methodology that bridges theory and practice. Both his research and studio work led to the articulation of a state of consciousness in performance that Danowski calls hauntological—a concept borrowed from Derrida but redefined to refer to a state of being where reality is co-constituted by the living and the dead, where ancestral spirits are invoked to do the work once reserved for characters. Ultimately, this led to the construction of a creative artifact, The Ghost Lounge, an art work that evokes a hauntological state of consciousness in the viewer.
Christopher Danowski is a theatre and performance artist. He has written over 50 plays, directed, and performed in living rooms, galleries, and unusual spaces (sometimes in theaters). He was artistic director of Theater in My Basement from 1999–2013, and now serves as a founding member of Howl Theatre Project. He is based in Phoenix and his work has been shown locally in New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, Yucatán, Mexico City, Dublin, Laval, Vienna, Berlin, and Kraków.
Transart Institute’s Low-Residency PhD
Final application deadline for 2017: July 1
The only low-residency PhD for artists is offered for creative work only: your artwork is your research. We foster research in: international diaspora, post-nationalism and post-colonialism; identity; exile; the role of art in peace and mediation; home; space(s) in between; temporary architecture; foreignness, otherness and the uncanny.
Transart Institute also offers a low-residency MFA in Creative Practice and Advanced Artist Summer Academy.
More information on Transart’s application process for the PhD, MFA and Academy can be found here.
2017 summer course catalog
To highlight the summer program we have produced an illustrated online summer catalogue which guides you through the Berlin schedule week by week with course descriptions, readings and faculty bios. It is available here: 2017 Summer Residency Catalog.
The School Without Borders for International Creative Praxes. Artist-run since 2004. Accredited by Plymouth University, UK.
T +1 (347) 410 9905 / admissions [at] transart.org / Skype: transartinstitute
www.transarttriennale.org / www.elsejournal.org
