Transart MFA & PhD: Call for Applications

TRANSART INSTITUTE seeks to attract independent, inquisitive and imaginative artists to fill the remaining spaces on its low-residency MFA program. In a uniquely international setting, Transart offers an accredited two year course for working artists, teachers and all professionals in related fields who are seeking advancement in visual arts and new media. The program consists of three intensive summer residencies in Europe filled with lectures, workshops, critiques, seminars, performances and exhibitions and two shorter winter residencies in New York City. In the four semesters between residencies, students create an individual course of study realizing art and research projects with the support of faculty and self-chosen studio advisors wherever they work and live.

THE MFA PROGRAM is geared towards the development of a sustainable artistic praxis rather than training in certain media or genres, challenging students to think conceptually and work creatively in new ways. Current students work with animation, curating, digital media, film, gaming, graphic design, installation, painting, performance, photography, robotics, sculpture, sound, text, video, virtual reality.

PRACTICE-BASED PHD STUDIES will begin this summer. A masters degree in art, design or realted fields is generally considered a requirement for acceptance. Transart is particularly keen on encouraging proposals from the areas of documentary art making, language/image, software studies and network culture. The proposal should demonstrate systematic study, independence, critical competence and originality. It should include a record of the ‘practice’ element and also serve to contextualize the practice intellectually while clearly demonstrating its contribution to knowledge. To be added to the PhD newsletter mailing list please contact cella@transartinstitute.org

SUMMER RESIDENCIES are both milestones and resources, taking place at the beginning middle and end of the two year program. Residencies open with a thesis exhibition, performances and a public vernissage. Weeks one and three consist of studio workshops, week two focuses on cultural studies seminars, Fridays center on student presentations. In addition, guest lectures, artist and curator talks and critiques as well as individual meetings with faculty take place each week in order for students to plan, inform and finalize the coming year’s project. Further details online.

IN WINTER RESIDENCIES the focus is on presentations, critiques, feedback and the sharing of resources mid-way through studio and research projects. Students have the opportunity to experiment with presentation forms order to explore exhibition, performance and documentation possibilities in anticipation of the summer thesis exhibition. Guest artist talks, screenings and practical topical workshops complete the residency. This winter’s schedule can be found in the calendar.

TRANSART FACULTY comes from a wide range of academic and artistic backgrounds as well as geographic locations. Current theoretical areas of expertise include software art, 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 include international artists working with sound, performance, dance and choreography, photography, drawing, sculpture, film and video, intervention and installation art. Details online.

THE MAJORITY OF TRANSART STUDENTS are emerging and mid-career artists and educators at tertiary institutions. Transart Institute’s residencies are a meeting place for cultural exchange. Transart students and alumni will converge for the summer residency from areas as diverse as Italy, Egypt, Pakistan, Iceland, Croatia, Ethiopia, Canada, Costa Rica, the UK and the US.

For many students the time at Transart is a transformational experience. New York 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”. Photographer and performer Angelika Rinnhofer found that “to work independently can pose a challenge but it also offers freedom and flexibility. Since a large number of students are accomplished artists and earn a living, Transart’s concept is ideal to work toward a degree and to expand one’s artistic career in addition to having a job.” 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.

TUITION is $9.760 per semester. Some partial scholarships (typically 10-25%) are available and will be awarded with acceptance into the program. Transart Developing Country Scholarships of 50% are given to residents/citizens of countries on the List of Developing Countries as published by the Australian Government.