Department of transformation

What tools are needed for individual, collective, and structural transformation? How can the idea of the artist become more porous and interdependent? Where can we gather together to change and grow?

Department of Transformation (D🌍T) is an artist-organized group that prototypes new formats for togetherness and mutual learning. Through workshops, events, publications, and consulting (+ karaoke!), D🌏T supports individuals, communities, and institutions in their own processes of change. D🌎T is transforming art & design in order to transform the world.

D🌍T’s micro-residency at The Clemente in New York establishes a home base for its many different activities. The residency transforms Studio 308 into D🌏T’s collective working space, reference library, and meeting place. Collaborating with a diverse set of practitioners—including artists, designers, thinkers, therapists, community builders, policy makers, and educators—D🌎T will prototype new pedagogical methods and offer counsel to individuals, communities, and institutions. As an extension of the micro-residency, D🌍T will periodically activate other communal spaces at The Clemente such as dance studios, theaters, and galleries through public events, gatherings, workshops, and exhibition formats—plus some karaoke practice! 

The project emerges from the Department of Transformation’s Groundwork residency at Canal Projects (2023–2024), as well as its Spring 2023 Teaching Tour. Traveling to art and design schools, museums, and non-profit organizations across the US, 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).

microresidency events:

• Dept of Transformation: Reflecting Forward

Participatory talk and workshop featuring Tamara Sussman and others. Hosted by Prem Krishnamurthy

When: Saturday, June 15, 7–9pm

Where: Canal Projects, 351 Canal St

• Dept of Transformation: Un-familia-r

  Workshop featuring Stephen Hanmer D'Elía and others. Hosted by Prem Krishnamurthy

  When: Sunday, June 23, 4–6pm

  Where: The Clemente, Studio 309, 107 Suffolk St

Support Dept of Transformation!

Would you like to make a tax-deductible donation to transform the arts? Just head to the donations page on The Clemente website and enter an amount! 

To make sure it reaches us, please check “Write us a comment” and type “DOT."

We appreciate your support!

Andros Zins-Browne, “The Chaos Opera.” Part of “Department of Transformation” at Night of Ideas Jersey City. Presented by Centre Pompidou/Villa Albertine. Hudson Country Community College, Jersey City, NJ. March 1, 2024. Photo: Jasmina Tomic.

“Department of Transformation: Activating Participation Now!” Featuring Andros Zins-Browne and Naoco Wowsugi. Canal Projects, New York City, NY. May 16, 2024. Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk.

“Deep Listening: Horticultural Sound Bath by Very Sad Lab with Smoke & Tea + Imka.” Organized by Naoco Wowsugi as part of How can we gather now?, Washington Project for the Arts, March 31–April 2 2023. Artistic directors: Asad Raza & Prem Krishnamurthy. Photo: Alexandra Silverthorne.

BIOS

Prem Krishnamurthy runs Department of Transformation, an artist-organized group that explores art as an agent of transformation for individuals, communities, and institutions. His multidisciplinary work manifests itself in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops (+ karaoke!). 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. His book-length epistolary essay, On Letters, was published in 2022. Having previously founded Project Projects and P!, he is currently a partner in the design consultancy Wkshps. 

COLLABORATORS

Andrew Sloat is a graphic designer, filmmaker, political organizer, and former creative director at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is currently working on a project exploring structures of response to the epidemic of loneliness in America. He has been a teacher and critic in the graduate graphic design programs at RISD and Yale. He received his MFA from Yale School of Art.

David Giles has worked at the intersection of urban policy, community development, and design for the last 15 years, first as the research director at the Center for an Urban Future and more recently as chief strategy officer at Brooklyn Public Library. He is interested in tactical urban design, public library innovation, community-driven planning, and convivial pedagogies. At BPL, David helped to design and launch the BKLYN Incubator, an innovation fund and support system for library-community partnerships. He has spoken widely on the changing role of libraries in the 21st century information economy. David lives and works in New York City and the Catskills.

Naoco Wowsugi is a community-engaged artist who lives and works in Washington, DC. Wowsugi’s cross-disciplinary projects range from portrait photography, participatory performance, and sound healing, to horticulture, exploring the nature of belonging and inclusive community building while they highlight and fortify everyday communal and interpersonal identities. Wowsugi’s art practice blurs the lines between being an artist and an engaged citizen.

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía has worked and lived in over 20 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America supporting children and families impacted by trauma, violence, and conflict. Whether child welfare in New York city, post-conflict recovery in Liberia, Afghan refugee assistance in Pakistan, or partnerships with religious communities on child rights issues, Stephen has worked through the interconnected lenses of therapy, policy development, and program implementation. An encompassing theme throughout Stephen’s journey is the primacy of relationships—in every interaction, no matter how ephemeral, lies an opportunity for grace, healing, and connection.

Tamara Sussman is a clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor at the New York State Psychiatric Institute / Columbia University Medical Center. She conducts research examining how adverse childhood experiences influence inhibitory control, reward-related decision making and risk for substance use. She also provides direct treatment, and the focus of her clinical work is treating post-traumatic stress disorder. She believes that it is important to maintain a connection between basic research and clinical practice, as observations made during clinical practice can meaningfully hone research questions. Before becoming a psychologist, she made art, earning an MFA at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and exhibiting her installation, photography, and collage with Rosamund Felsen Gallery.