Transart Triennale 2016

WORKSHOPS

Applications are open to attend one of the Triennale week workshops. There are limited spaces open to the public. 

Apply here: https://transartinstitute.slideroom.com/#/Login

"Art After the Anthropocene" with Simon Pope
This year we’ll find out whether the International Commission on Stratigraphy has ratified the use of the term ‘anthropocene’ to describe a new geological epoch ‘during which humans have a decisive influence on the state, dynamics and future of the Earth system’. Whatever the outcome, headlines such as “Rocks Made of Plastic Found on Hawaiian Beach” serve as reminders of the profound transformations that humans perform on those things that we once considered separate from us—whether a different animal species or type of material. Far from being inert matter or undifferentiated environment, we now admit to the complex and entangled relationships that these things have with humans and other beings: the worms ingested into our gut to exercise the human micro-biome, the mosquitos co-dependent on the improvised architecture in laboratories, the mercury washed from a paper mill, ingested by the fish which now rests on our plate. All things—human or otherwise—are agents, capable of entering mutually transformative relations with others.

Our training as creative practitioners is largely shaped by the legacy of the avant-garde and its antagonism towards its contemporary and historical Others. Through techniques of estrangement, inversion, destruction and distanciation we inherit the means to ensure art’s autonomy. But how appropriate are these “tricks of the trade” when we acknowledge our inevitable entanglement with others? Can we still appeal to art’s ‘aesthetic alibi’ when relating to others?
This three day workshop develops a narrative through which we will ask how art and other creative practices might engage with the world once we acknowledge that we are living in the Anthropocene. We will be accompanied by examples of artists’ practice which exemplify a range of dispositions towards this more-than-human, vibrantly material world. We will wonder at the hubris of ‘the moderns’, the audacity of the avant-garde and the sadness of the retreat into the imaginary. Our hopes will be raised by Donna Haraway, Felix Guattari, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, and others— those who acknowledge our inextricable entanglement with other things and who might best prepare us for art-making ‘after the Anthropocene’.

"Subjectivity and the Mirror: Framing the Self" with Ruth Novaczek
Subjectivity and selfhood in the age of the selfie. This 3 day course will look at how we frame ourselves in any chosen medium and will explore notions of self and the mirror.
This workshop asks questions about subjectivity and framing the self. So what do you remember in the mise en scene of a film? Do you notice the background, the colours, the details, or the central narrative action? By this I mean, where do you stand. Subjectivity can be the prism through which you parse the world and give it meaning. So the standup and the artist aren’t that different. We observe, we take a position. The subject can be looking out at the world or in on the self. The frame is our approach to subjectivity and the self a prism for experience. The assignment is to research and make a short film or piece of work in your chosen medium over three days.

"Wanderings, Musings and the Art of Getting Lost" with Jean Marie Casbarian
Through daily excursions we will approach the poetics of walking as a medium for studio production.  We will wander in and out of urban space and along its edges and ask ourselves what it means to get lost in or on the square, the park, the wood, the river.  Finding inspiration from the flaneur of the 19th century to the current day walking artist, we will walk together and we will walk alone, we will make and we will write, culminating in our shared imagination of experience.

We will explore a wide range of artists, writers, and walkers including the Situationists (Guy Debord, Simon Sadler), Andre Breton, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Eugene Atget, Edward Muybridge, Bruce Nauman, Simon Pope, Sophie Calle, Richard Long, Nicolas Dumit Estavez, Henry David Thoreau, and Walter Benjamin, among others.

"Iconographic Dictionary of Collective and Collaborative Artistic Practices" with Paz Ponce (Full)

“Iconographic dictionary on collective and collaborative artistic practices” is an experimental publication and participatory program of events curated by Paz Ponce in cooperation with Transart Institute, berlinerpool arts network and Agora Collective, Berlin.
User’s guide (II). Notes for performing this dictionary is one of the three stages in which the collective project “Iconographic dictionary…” will find its way into a wider public. In this public performance phase, the final publication will be dissected through a 3 day seminar where participating artists and practitioners will be paired under similar dictionary entries to collaboratively unfold its content during a performative day event following the seminar at Uferstudios in the frame of the Transart Triennale 2016 in Berlin.
The process of this collaborative and performative phase will be led by Agora Collective, invited as facilitators of this encounter between the artists of the different collectives whose work illustrate specific entries during the three day workshop. The facilitators will contribute as co-curators of the event at uferstudios exhibition space.