Preferred application deadline: December 2015
Transart Institute
The International Creative Practice MFA/PhD
228 Park Ave S. #34726
New York, NY 10003
T +1 347 410 9905
Skype: transartinstitute
[email protected]
The second Transart Triennale will span this planet and year. To open, we will poke, test, debate, play, and run with the theme coined by philosopher Rosi Braidotti—”The Imperceptible Self”—through the sharing and experiencing of creative practices driven by the nomadic, peripatetic, subjectivity, otherness, ego-less identity, the space in between, becoming, and presence.
Fully aware that our “interactions” with “other” cultures and nature profoundly alters all—just as memories change with each reflection—we will stray from preservation in terms of identity politics: shepherding nature and “I” to consider other modes of framing existence. How else can we consider the implosion of exiled states; the entropic influx into the largest cities; the sinking of smaller ones; the collapsing distance between us, self, and other; of difference? How to live now in a state of flux with possibility and joy?
Seed packets—as posts—have been planted on this site by the utopian art school Transart and will serve as a hub, springboard, and magnet for the various threads which take root and flower in the months ahead. We invite you to join these existing posts, or even to plant your own (and please consider contributing to existing packets where relevant to fortify your own submission). Fertilized by submissions, comments, and proposals you add, a jury will determine which canes are sturdy enough to raise and become ribs able to support and expand our festive umbrella: “The Imperceptible Self”.
A Transart Creative Project Board will review all submissions and guest editors will sift and cultivate documentation of Transartfest events, publishing papers, artwork, performances, reviews, interviews, and other fruits of our search in the fall annual issue.
Submission and proposal deadlines
Papers, essays, recordings, creative writing, visual and sound portfolios, performances, skill or other exchanges, pecha kucha talks, symposia, curatorial and theme slam proposals, lectures, discussion groups, workshop descriptions/syllabi, Triennale documentation, etc. Note: letters of support, venue, publicity, video and photo documentation will be provided for all accepted projects.
November 1: Transarfest Triennale
This is also the deadline for partial project funding requests.
January 1, 2016: Transartfest Affiliated Projects
This deadline is for self- or outside-funded projects.
September 1, 2016: ELSE Journal issue 2: “The Imperceptible Self”
Call for submissions and all other information to date
ELSE Journal
An annual journal that welcomes experimental and alternative forms of representing creative work. Peer-reviewed works, projects, and research thematically gravitating towards memory, forgetting, trauma and the archive; language/image; gender; software, materiality and mediality; international diaspora and post-colonialism; cultural engagement through food; the role of art in peace meditation; performance activism; liminality; space/place; temporary architecture; foreignness, otherness and the uncanny.
Published by Transart Institute, e-ISSN: 2334-2765.
Call for submissions
The Transart self-directed educational experience
–Summer intensives in Berlin, winter sessions in New York City.
–Workshops, seminars, talks, critiques, cultural excursions, exhibition and performance opportunities every residency.
–A highly individualized contemporary learning experience without grades.
–Realization of creative projects with the support of self-chosen advisors and curators.
–Low-residency format fosters a sustainable practice while balancing relationships and advancing your careers
–International make-up of students and faculty fosters exchange across cultural boundaries
–Offsite creative work, critiques and advisement wherever you live and work.
–Continue to exhibit, screen and perform your work internationally in the Transart Collective as an alumni.
The MFA Creative Practice is a student-centered, project-oriented program that 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 PhD Creative Practice is a low-residency three-year program and only offered for creative research.
Transart People
Transart faculty and advisors come 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 includes international artists working with sound, performance, dance and choreography, photography, drawing, sculpture, film and video, intervention and installation.
The majority of Transart studentsare emerging and mid-career artists and teachers at tertiary institutions. Students’ experiences at the Institute are unique and often transformational. New York-based artist Virgil Wong found that “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.”
Transart alumnicontinue to exhibit, screen and perform internationally through the Transart Collective. Recently, MFA students Beau B. Baco (Philippines), Abdullah Khan (Pakistan), Fatimah White (New York), Honi Ryan (Australia), and Mariana Rocha (Brazil) participated in the Bienal de Arte de Sao Paulo, while films by MFA student José Drummund (Lisbon), faculty Jean Marie Casbarian (New York), and Caroline Koebel (Austin) were being shown with those of John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Harun Farocki, William Wegman, Miranda July and Shelly Silver at the VAFA international film festival in Macau.
Current topics: Memory, Forgetting, Trauma and the Archive; Language/Image; Gender; Software, Materiality and Mediality; International Diaspora and Post-Colonialism; Cultural Engagement through Food; Role of Art in Peace and Mediation; Performance Activism; Liminality; Space/Place; Temporary Architecture; Wandering Ecologies; Foreignness, Otherness and the Uncanny.
Transart Institute
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.
