Transat Institute offers the MFA Creative Practice, an international masters program for working artists with summer residencies in Berlin, winter residencies in New York and one-on-one advisement during two academic years – wherever students work and live.
The new MFA Creative Practice is a student-centered postgraduate art program which fosters independent thinking, risk-taking and the creation of an informed and sustainable art praxis. The Institute is also a platform for faculty to expand their teaching praxis by making space for creativity and experimentation.
Beyond its educational objectives, Trans-Art Institute is engaged in building an international community in support of students, alumni, faculty and their artistic and academic goals.
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.
Despite its small size, Trans-Art 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.
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 majority of Trans-Art students are emerging and mid-career artists and teachers at tertiary institutions. Trans-Art Institute’s residencies are a place for cultural exchange. Current students will converge for the summer residency from areas as diverse as Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Iceland, Croatia, Ethiopia, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Austria, Egypt, the Netherlands, the Philippines, the UK and the US.
Faculty for the coming summer includes:
Iraqi born artist Wafaa Bilal who has exhibited his art world wide and traveled and lectured extensively to inform audiences of the situation of the Iraqi people, and the importance of peaceful conflict resolution. Bilal’s 2007 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 its 2007 Artist of the Year. In fall 2008 City Lights published "Shoot an Iraqi: Life, Art and Resistance Under the Gun," about Bilal’s life and the Domestic Tension project.
Carolyn Guertin, Director of the eCreate Lab and Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is also a Mentor in the de Montfort University’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media in the U.K. and Senior McLuhan Fellow at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, Canada. She was a presenter at the Hybridities Symposium at Ars Electronica in 2005. She earned her doctorate in digital narrative at the University of Alberta in 2003, and does theoretical work on cyber-feminism, interface technologies and born-digital arts.
And Nicolás Estévez, an interdisciplinary artist working mostly in performance art and public interventions. His projects have been exhibited extensively in the US as well as internationally at venues such as Madrid Abierto/ARCO, Havana Biennial, El Museo del Barrio, Bronx Museum of the Arts, P.S.1/MoMA. In 2007 Estévez was awarded an alumni 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
The full summer program is online at: http://www.transartinstitute.org/Summer
Practice-based PhD
A path to a studio-based PhD is in progress and practice-based doctoral programs are currently available through University of Plymouth. For more information or to subscribe to upcoming news about a Trans-Art Institute PhD program please contact: cella@transartinstitute.org
Summer Residency 2010: July 25 – August 13, 2010 in Berlin
Winter Residency 2011: January 6 – 9, 2011 in Brooklyn, NY
Application deadline with rolling admissions: June 1, 2010
Online application: http://www.transartinstitute.org/Pages/NewForms/ApplicationForm1.php
For more information please contact Selina Heaton: info@transartinstitute.org
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