INTERNATIONAL diaspora, post-nationalism and post-colonialism; identity; exile; the role of art in peace and mediation; home; space(s) in between; temporary architecture; foreignness, otherness and the uncanny are all areas Transart Institute supports and instigates research, projects and practices within. We champion open-minded independent thinking, experimentation and informed endeavors.
CURRENT research initiatives—including the Transart Triennale, ELSE Journal and new NEST (New Experiments in Sharing Terrain) project—are what make the Transart educational experience distinctive, vital, relevant and useful. We actively blur and erase any divide between academia and current cultural and social concerns, theory and practice offering opportunities for students, alumni, faculty and advisors to create and forge meaningful international and trans-disciplinary relationships, establish networks and foster experiences that expand, enhance and sustain their individual and collective practices. We solicit and encourage research that engages with Transart’s research priorities in the belief that collective minds, praxis and action are greater than the sum of their individual parts.
INDEPENDENT, utopian, post-national and trans-disciplinary Transart Institute “unschool art school,” embodies the idea that participation in a vibrant and current graduate experience requires possibilities untethered to geography. Our focus and strength has centered on an exceptional international teaching, research and learning program that leads to higher degrees in creative, curatorial and transcultural practices. Adopting a respiratory model of meeting and dispersing, Transart positions itself in the gaps where art practice, knowledge production and research processes operate; in the tensions between, across, through and beyond recognised paradigms. Encouraging active student-driven learning over passive educational models, our students and faculty—from all over the planet—meet bi-annually as we continue to work wherever we live, actively supported by the Transart community.
WE BELIEVE that education is not just a paper-chase and is most relevant, effective and powerful when vitally connected to projects and initiatives in the world—beyond the walls of the academy. By its very nature, Transart creates international research communities that encourage and promote dialogue and collaboration between artists, writers, curators and thinkers across cultures borders. Driven by our students desires rather than the demands of bureaucracy and real estate we remain agile, responsive and nomadic; currently meeting in Berlin and New York City.
REMARKABLE development over ten years brings us to the next phase in our evolution. The ‘transartist’ vision is continually amplified by a growing global network of artists, curators and creative thinkers working collectively in hybrid ways that span engaged sites and interactive online spaces from Brazil to Australia, Ethiopia to Canada, Pakistan to Iceland. These reverberating actions further stimulate emergent streams of public programming and events and drive our educational curiosity ever further. This exciting moment finds Transart again at the cutting edge of what schools, arts institutions, communities and broader cultural experiences might be in the twenty-first century.
TRANSART INSTITUTE was founded by two artists and remains operated entirely by artists.