The Detroit ISP is a mission driven to explore new models of transmission in education through art and the City. That art is a form of education is a fundamental conviction behind the Detroit ISP. We want to find new ways of posing the basic question, What is it to teach or learn through Art? and to do so within the framework of an Independent Study Program where Fellows in interdisciplinary dialogue are supported through an intellectual community in the development of a distinctive critical practice. The traditional Crit is no longer the main vehicle of learning. We are proposing new forms of collaboration between Fellows and Mentors in the development of a Work-Forum where ideas, materials, research, and methodologies are explored and shared in a non-hierarchical practice for which conversation is a model. This requires a durational and embedded practice on the part of both artists and all who would provide responses to work that is always the outcome of durational processes and practices, where the work is also a process, a becoming. The DDD Detroit Independent Study Program is an attempt to explore and to articulate new models and critical practices of what an education through Art, an education of embodied mind could be.

The core of the Detroit ISP curriculum is an Independent Study Proposal prepared by a Fellow as part of the application to the ISP and worked on during the fall Session of the academic year with a Committee to support the Fellow. The Independent Study Proposal outlines research to be undertaken over an academic year (two Sessions) culminating in an installation (individually or in a group) and a written Report. It is a Report and not a thesis since there is nothing definitive about the research.

In addition, each Program will have its own lead person (curator | scholar | artist), a Director of Practice; for Critical Studies + Art Writing, the lead person will be a Director of Studies. Each student will have a proposal (circa 1,500 words) for independent study that will be the core of their practice over the academic year. After the initial 2 weeks of introductory shared readings with the Director of Critical Studies + Art Writing, each Program will be overseen by its Director of Practice - or Director of Studies for Critical Studies - who will organize twice weekly seminars for students (one in Practice and one in Critical Studies in which all participate) as well as meetings between students in the Program and visiting curators | scholars | artists. The Director of Practice | Critical Studies + Art Writing will also be responsible for organizing visits in the city, readings, screenings, and community conversations amongst students as well as between students and Visitors. Each Friday, the entire cohort will meet for lunch and community conversation based on agreed reading and topics for open discussion bearing on the practice of the ISP community. A Session consists of weekly meetings for 10 weeks (a quarter), followed by 3 weeks of no seminars when Fellows will be allowed time to synthesize their work from the preceding quarter and meet with their Committee or have one-on-one meetings with their mentors who should be available to discuss independent work and issues stemming from the semester of critical practice. The spring semester will reproduce this structure with more advanced work and conversations on developments in independent critical practice in the Workforum. The academic year will end with: 1. an exhibition of works with accompanying publications / documentations, 2. a symposium organized by the cohort (and open to the public); 3. the curators and critical theorists are also expected to prepare publications appropriate to their field. At a minimum, all publications should be available online at the ISP’s website and where resources permit print copies should be made available. Guidelines for publications and a timetable for these expectations will be agreed by the end of the fall Session of each year.