Transart Institute
228 Park Avenue South, #34726
New York, NY 10003
T +1 347 410 9905
[email protected]
Skype: transartinstitute
www.transart.org
The Transart experience
– Summer intensives in Berlin, winter sessions in New York City
– Workshops, seminars, talks, critiques, cultural excursions tours, 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 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.
Transart people
Transart faculty and advisors comes from a wide range of academic and artistic backgrounds as well as geographic locations. Current theoretical areas of expertise include curatorial work, cyber-feminism, 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.
The majority of Transart students are 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 alumni continue to exhibit, screen and perform internationally through the Transart Collective. Currently MFA students Beau B. Baco (Philippines), Abdullah Khan (Pakistan), Fatimah White (New York), Honi Ryan (Australia), and Mariana Rocha (Brazil) are participating in Bienal de Arte de Sao Paulo. MFA student José Drummund (Lisbon), faculty Jean Marie Casbarian (New York), and Caroline Koebel’s (Austin) films are being shown with those of John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Harun Farocki, William Wegman, Miranda July and Shelly Silver at VAFA (Video Art For All) International 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; 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.
Accredited by Plymouth University, UK.
Finances and scholarships
8,000 USD scholarships will be offered to all accepted applicants who apply by the MFA preferred admissions deadline of January 23. Payment plans are available. Letters of support for funding at other institutions are available upon request.
For winter open house information, please contact [email protected].
Admissions
Subscribe to Else Art Journal
More information on the summer sessions can be found here.
