chalkboard map planning for Detroit Methods

…is the project studio I am starting today at Wayne State, exploring the unique way that Detroit art collectives (including Dflux: Detroit Research Studio, Heidelberg Project, The Hinterlands, Market Studio Kitchen + Detroit Emergent Futures LAB, MBAD Bead Museum, Popps Packing, Power House Productions and Design 99, The Edible Hut, TAP (The Alley Project) Gallery, Yes Farm) are domesticating the city, and institutionalizing the home in a post-industrial and at times post-capitalist urban environment. (webpage)

‘Detroit Methods’ is a studio for exploring the particularly innovative ways in which some contemporary artists are working in Detroit today, while developing student projects with similar strategies and approaches. We are looking at ten local art collectives and artist run initiatives, and their ways of working that extend beyond the conventional private production space of the solitary artist studio and the controlled public presentation space of the commercial gallery and art institution. Instead we see these artists turning into the home, and extending out to the commons, i.e. the street and shared public spaces of the city. The fundamentals of human culture, survival, and pleasure become the source and focus. Eating, gathering, conversing, gardening, cooking, composting, constructing, playing, bathing, cleaning, socializing, and learning often become central to the work. In the process our assumption of a clear division between daily life and elevated art may become blurred.

These approaches to making and experiencing art have been on the rise globally, but in Detroit we see it happening in a unique way at new levels of visibility and activity. The city has become the focus of international attention and an influential center for a particular kind of art making. Young artists establishing themselves in Detroit with conventional backgrounds in painting, sculpture, architecture, design, music, literature, and performance are often confronted with a reality where those conventions no longer make sense. Other ways of working emerge. We will study and apply those strategies, or Detroit Methods, to our work for this studio.

Since all art is about some response to time and place, we pay special attention to what it means to be an artist in the city of Detroit today. Since all art is about communication, we will consider uniquely effective and appropriate ways to present and share our work. Since our work may be ephemeral and temporary in nature, not taking the form of discrete objects, this is especially important. Since all art comes from a community or a culture, we will pay special attention to the community of our class (housed in a communal studio space) and school, the community of local artists, the general community of the city, and your personal communities around you at home.