Groundwork

November 2023–June 2024

The Department of Transformation (D🌎T) Groundwork project emerged from the Department of Transformation’s Spring Tour 2023, a recently completed teaching tour across the US. Traveling to art and design schools, museums, and non-profit organizations, D🌎T shared new frameworks for art-making, as well as specific tools for collaboration. The approach is also informed by Prem Krishnamurthy’s year-long residency at KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2018), the exhibition space P! (2012–2017), and experimental programs such as Present! (2020 2021) and How can we gather now? (2022).

The residency at Canal Projects allowed the Department of Transformation to pursue diverse research strands. The space served as a hub for dialogue, connection, and prototyping new forms of gathering. Activities included one-on-one and small-scale meetings with artists, designers, writers, curators, non-profit leaders, psychologists, therapists, political organizers, and others; a monthly reading group with a changing format for choosing and understanding new books together; initial workshops with a cohort of artists-turned-therapists to develop cross-disciplinary methods; as well as larger-scale, multi-modal public events in collaboration with artists such as An Duplan, Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi, both at Canal Projects and offsite in collaboration with organizations such as Centre Pompidou Jersey City / Villa Albertine and The Clemente.

Public Programs:

Groundwork Reading Group with David Giles, December 2023–June 2024, (Public & private events, public events occurred on: January 17, March 6, June 5)

Grounding with Anaïs Duplan & Naoco Wowsugi, Friday, November 17, 2023 (7–9 PM)

Night of Ideas: Department of Transformation with Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi, Friday, March 1, 2024 (7 PM–midnight), at the Hudson County Community College with Villa Albertine & Centre Pompidou

Activating Participation Now! with Andros Zins-Browne & Naoco Wowsugi, Thursday, May 16, 2024 (7–9 PM)

Reflecting Forward with Tamara Sussman, Saturday, June 15, 2024 (7–9 PM)

About Department of Transformation:

Department of Transformation (D🌎T) is an artist-organized group that mobilizes the power of art and design to prototype new formats and methods for collaborative learning. What tools are needed for individual, collective, and structural transformation? How can the notion of the artist become more porous and interdependent? Where can we gather together to change and grow? Engaging with such questions, the Department of Transformation invites artists, thinkers, therapists, and others to explore alternative pathways for art that is responsive to our trying times. D🌎T was founded by designer, author, and educator Prem Krishnamurthy and takes shape through public programs, exhibitions, educational engagements, and community-based activities (+ karaoke!) around the world.

Biography:

Prem Krishnamurthy is a designer, author, and educator. His multifaceted work explores the role of art as an agent of transformation at an individual, collective, and structural level. He received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communications Design in 2015 and KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s “A Year With…” residency fellowship in 2018. He has curated several large-scale exhibitions including FRONT International 2022: Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows. In 2022, Domain Books published his book-length epistolary essay, On Letters. Previously, Prem founded the design studio Project Projects and the exhibition space P! in New York.