tmt institute 2026/2027

What Is the TMT Institute?
The TMT Institute is a cohort of artists who seek to radically disrupt and re-examine their existing practice without any goal or expected result.

Each Fellow’s journey is individual. Fellows create their own course as they reinvent, question, and challenge their artistic practice. TMT supports fellows with space, material resources and a $2,000 stipend.

The Institute gathers for three short intensive sessions to help each Fellow advance this process. In between intensive meetings, we meet monthly for breakfast and go on occasional excursions to keep our conversation growing.

After the second intensive, each Fellow is encouraged to define and commit to an exploration that they can pursue outside of group gatherings. Target Margin supports these experiments with resources: space, collaborators, materials, etc. Fellows share their progress and evolution through the duration of the Institute. At the end of the season, TMT hosts an “Open Studio” to invite our community of artists and neighbors to share in what we have been exploring. This is not a performance; it can be a conversation, notes, a demonstration, or simply the Fellow’s presence to discuss their work with anyone interested.

The purpose of The TMT Institute is pure experimentation, with no product-oriented end goal.
The Institute intentionally rejects product-oriented work; Fellows pursue no project, no developmental stage, no result of any kind. Our goal is to create a place where artists set aside their assumptions about creating art and disrupt their established practice. Artists try new ways of working, new disciplines to explore, and new aesthetic goals and principles. We value directionless exploration; we consider misfires, dead ends, and bad ideas to be a fruitful and joyous part of our work.

**Calendar Requirements
**Fellows must be available in person for the following dates in Brooklyn NY:

• Intensive Sessions at Target Margin Theater

  • November 5, 6, 7, 8: all day with some evening hours

  • January 8, 9, 10: all day with some evening hours

  • March 19, 20, 21: all day with some evening hours

• Fellows meet for breakfast at Junior’s in Brooklyn to share thoughts, questions, and experience on the following days:

  • October 20, November 30, January 4, February 1, March 8, April 5, May 3

From time to time, we organize excursions to performances, artistic, or other cultural events to feed our thinking.
As the year proceeds, Fellows schedule their own explorations or experiments which Target Margin will support.
Please note that while we meet to share ideas, each Fellow follows their own path of experimentation.

In June 2027 an open studio weekend will share Fellows’ explorations with our artistic community, our Sunset Park neighbors, and the general public. Fellows may describe, discuss or demonstrate their explorations in whatever way suits their work. But this should not be in the form of an audience-attended, time-bounded show.

Tips for Applicants
Please do not apply to the Institute with a project. This is not a project development workshop. There is no public deliverable or timeline to meet.

Appropriate candidates have already created a body of work in their field. The Institute is for artists with an established practice to set that aside and launch in new directions: directors may become installation artists; performers might work with design; producers can pursue ceramics. We aspire to abandon received assumptions about theater, so individuals can create new ways of working from the ground up.

If you recently emerged from a training program, it is likely you will not be an appropriate candidate for this fellowship. This fellowship is not designed to advance your existing practice. There is no formal education level or degree required for this program.