Transart Institute: Creative Practice – International Low Residency MFA & Certificate Program

Application deadline: June 15, 2010

http://www.transartinstitute.org

The certificate program seves artists who are not seeking a degree. Participants join MFA students in workshops, lectures and critiques and leave the residency with input on project plans for the year ahead. Artists attend the residency to get a creative surge, get a fresh perspective on their work, revitalize their practice, take their work in a new direction, make plans for a focussed praxis in the year ahead and to become part of an international community of artists, theorists and curators. Artists who successfully complete the residency will receive a non-credit certificate of attendance.

Several scholarships are available to students of the MFA Creative Practice program, includking Developing Country Scholarships, Achievement and Merit Scholarships. The scholarships provide a reduction in tuition up to 50%. More information on scholarships can be found online: http://www.transartinstitute.org/Admissions.html

Transart faculty and students come from a wide range of academic and artistic backgrounds as well as geographic locations. A majority of Transart students are emerging and mid-career artists and teachers at tertiary institutions.

Students’ experiences at Transart Institute are unique and intense, in the words of photographer Angelika Rinnhofer: “The residency was one of the most intense times I have ever experienced. I found the workshops artistically liberating and informative, the critiques were enlightening, and I frequently refer back to several of the seminar readings and discussions. I found the time spent on project planning for the art and research projects by discussing ideas and artistic approaches to be extremely valuable and helpful.” NY 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.” 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.” More details online at: http://www.transartinstitute.org/Profiles.html

Summer Faculty includes:
Iraqi born artist Wafaa Bilal who has exhibited his art worldwide and traveled and lectured extensively to inform audiences of the situation of the Iraqi people, and the importance of peaceful conflict resolution. Bilal’s dynamic installation Domestic Tension placed him on the receiving end of a paintball gun that was accessible online to a worldwide audience, 24 hours a day. Newsweek called the project “breathtaking” and the Chicago Tribune called the month-long piece “one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time,” and named Bilal Artist of the Year.

Myron Beasley is an International Curator and Ethnographer who lectures in the areas of Critical Cultural Studies and Performance Studies. His recent work explores how traditional ritual practices are mitigated, configured, and interpreted in particular sites/cities of the African Diaspora. His fieldwork has led him to the United States, Morocco, Brazil, and most recently Haiti where he is the co-curator of the Ghetto Biennale. He is also a performance artist who uses food as his primary medium.

Nicolás Estévez, an interdisciplinary artist working mostly in performance art and public interventions. His projects have been exhibited extensively internationally at venues such as Madrid Abierto/ARCO, Havana Biennial, El Museo del Barrio, Bronx Museum of the Arts, P.S.1/MoMA. Estévez has been awarded a commission to present a town-wide project as part of The MacDowell Colony Centennial. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, NYArts Magazine, The Boston Globe, Art Nexus, Flash Art, Cuban Arts, and in major publications in Mexico, Spain and the Dominican Republic.

All faculty bios are at: http://www.transartinstitute.org/members.html
The full summer program is online at: http://www.transartinstitute.org/summer_program.html

The Transart International Collective, started by faculty and alumni, will hold exhibitions in Vienna, Manila and Berlin this year. The institute offers its former students a virtual and material basis for artistic practice, the exchange of ideas, opportunities and critiques, supporting individual and collective growth beyond the duration of the program through the collective. Despite its small size, Transart Institute has become a place where the diverse and often incongruous experiences, philosophies and epistemologies of the post-colonial world can be in contact with each other. More information online at: http://www.transartinstitute.org/collective.html

Application Deadline is June 15, 2010 with rolling admissions.

General information: http://www.transartinstitute.org

For specific information please contact Selina Heaton, Administrative Manager: [email protected]

USA: +1 (347) 410 9905 | Fax: (508) 682 2853

Summer residency | July 25 – August 13, 2010 | Tanzfabrik, Berlin
Winter residency | January 6 – 9, 2011 | Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

MFA Creative Practice validated by University of Plymouth, UK