Lark Gilmer-Smothermon – “Grass Text: GENUG O, laurin” (2011), hand-tied pasture grass and fishing line with Margie, approx. 18″ x 6′
The Transart Institute believes in a different kind of arts education.
They believe in a kind of education which one can only gain from life experience, rather than from the confines of an institutional framework. Dissatisfied with the established models of control and discipline within schooling where students are all fed the same knowledge in the same ways over and over again, Transart set to work on a multi-perspective approach which re-imagines the development of sustainable artistic practise and allows students to lead their own paths to academic success. They are the drivers, Transart only the vehicle.
Sonia E Barrett – “Table Number One” (2012), Metal table top, antique wooden wheeled table legs, rope, sheeps intestines, styrofoam, 59 cm x 50 cm x 89cm
This month, eleven Transart artists from all over the world have gathered in Berlin for their third summer residency, during which they will present the work which they’ve been rigorously developing over the last two years. The results of their vastly diverse yet consistently determined trajectories will be exhibited at Atelierhof Kreuzberg, with Trampoline curators Miles Chalcraft and Anette Schäfer (who produced last Autumn’s Tracing Mobility exhibition and symposium at Haus der Kulturen der Welt) overseeing the show.
Bringing together film, painting, sculpture, photography and sound, the show unites a set of completely independent artists working with various means and various influences. German/Jamaican artist Sonia E. Bennett works with disassembled and rearranged 18th and 19th Century furniture to explore the relationship between empathy and subordination, whilst Venezuelan-born Livia Daza-Paris documents her search for her disappeared father, translating complex notions of grief, love and courage into something visible. Conversely, artists Eto Otitigbe, Andrew Telichan and Daniel Marchwinski have employed the use of contemporary digital technology in their explorations of identity, language and place. Throughout the exhibition, personal, social and political histories have been re-visited, re-interpreted, re-shaped and re-figured to reveal potential and produce things more desirable. Collectively, the body of MFA work speaks of transformation.
“WE ARE TRANSFORMERS, alchemists at play, steeped in the fumes of our reflections, turning base experience into something more desirable. We are the arbiters of potential, conjurers of resistance, stepping up the voltage from one set of coiled emotions to another, spinning up just enough power to transmit our story across the globe. We are hard-wired components straddling our past and our future, turning our personal histories, mythologies, cultural genetics and ethnic dynasties into the future stories we want to tell about ourselves…”
Transart artists are: Sonia E Barrett Paula Billups Livia Daza-Paris Lark Gilmer-Smothermon Daniel Marchwinski Eto Otitigbe Alessandro Sau Dianne Smith Stephan Takkides Andrew Teheran Andrew Telichan
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Additional Information
ATELIERHOF KREUZBERG
“TRANSFORMERS: COILED POTENTIALS” – MFA GROUP EXHIBITION
Exhibition: July 21 – August 10, 2012
Midissage reception (with drinks and live music): Sat, July 28, 7pm – 10pm
Schleiermacherstrasse 31-37 (click here for map)
About Trampoline
Transformers is curated by Trampoline, agency for Art and Media, founded by Miles Chalcraft and Anette Schäfer in 1997. Trampoline is based in Nottingham and Berlin and supports and develops artists working at the critical edge of emerging technologies and digital culture. Over the last 14 years, Trampoline has gained an international reputation with its diverse events and programmes, such as the Radiator Festival: International Festival for Art and Media; the Radiator Symposium; First Play Berlin and Tracing Mobility.
About Transart
Transart Institute offers an international low-residency MFA and a practice-based PhD program for working artists in a highly individualized format. The innovative MFA program consists of three intensive summer residencies with lectures, workshops, critiques, seminars, performances and exhibitions in Europe and two winter residencies in New York. The Institute’s programs are geared towards the development of a sustainable artistic praxis rather than training in certain media or genres.
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Blog entry by Samantha Manton in Berlin; Sunday, July 22, 2012.
