ABOUT
IMPRACTICAL SPACES is a collaborative national project and groundbreaking anthology of publications that offers a historical look at defunct and active artist-run projects throughout the United States. This long term project will engage at least fifty cities in fifty states with the intent of assembling all publications for distribution in the form of a book charting the national significance of the artist-run scene.
Impractical Spaces is the first project to comprehensively record the development of artist-run spaces on a national scale. The goal of this project is to produce documentation and a national network to demonstrate the breadth of artist-run initiatives.
why | where
Traditionally, artist-run spaces have been sites for experimentation and risk-taking. The case studies in Impractical Spaces can help future artists and can be seen as prototypes for housing, collaboration, or new models of working for a broader audience.
As an archive, it challenges the idea of the city center as the hub for all relevant artistic activity by celebrating the elastic resilience of the artistic spirit. It gives shape to a stream of artistic activity separate from the commercial gallery system but equally important. It is a largely self-funded economy that gives life to the experimental projects that have evolved to the needs of artists.
What makes this project truly unique are our partners—artists, writers, and arts administrators who live in the cities they chronicle and are the authorities and authors of their own histories.
HOW
Impractical Spaces establishes relationships with individuals and institutions within partner cities or regions, to produce a publication that documents the historical significance of their artist-run spaces. For more information on becoming a partner please visit our partnership application page.
TEAM
Paddy Johnson is the founding editor of the contemporary art blog Art F City and a freelance writer and arts consultant. With Nancy Kleaver, she runs PARADE, a non-profit arts organization that commissions civically engaged art in Queens. She was the first recipient of the Arts Writers Grant for blogging in 2008, and a two-time nominee for Best Critic at the Rob Pruitt Awards in 2009 and 2010. She won the Village Voice Web Award for best Art Blog in 2010 and in 2011. Paddy has contributed to The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Economist, CNN, VICE, Gizmodo, Observer, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic. She was a columnist for Artnet, The L Magazine, and Art in America. In 2014, she was the subject of a VICE profile. She teaches new media art and writing in New York, where she lives with her partner.
Cory Imig is an artist, educator, and arts administrator. Imig has exhibited in numerous exhibitions across the United States, in spaces such as Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art and Southwest School of Art in San Antonio. She has also attended residencies at Art Omi International Art Center and ACRE.
Imig was a founding member of PLUG Projects (2011-2015), a curatorial collaboration in the Stockyards District of Kansas City, as well as Say Uncle (2015-2018), which was a 3-year nomadic residency and exhibition program in Central Illinois. She was a founder of Beyond Alternatives, a symposium which focused on artist-led projects happening outside of large metropolitan areas.
Book Us to Speak at Your Institution
Paddy Johnson, Cory Imig and Dulcee Boehm regularly speak about the history of artist-run projects and their impact on cities across the country. We lecture on the following subjects:
● Impractical Spaces and why it’s important.
● Artist Run Spaces, a survey of spaces across the country
● Creating and managing humane infrastructure to support artists and artist led-projects
advisory
We built the Impractical Spaces program with the advise feedback of many individuals. They include but are not limited to the following individuals.
Joe Voss, Amy Whitaker, David Hughes, Marsha Owett, Laurel Ptak, Danielle Mysliwiec, Saul Chernick, Deana Haggag, James McAnally, Martha Wilson, Amy Kligman, Jennifer Roe
SUPPORT
Rocket Grants project award, a program of the Charlotte Street Foundation and the University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art Funding is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Owett Studio, David Knowles, Leavens, Strand, and Glover LLC, Sunlight Taxes, Hannah Cole, Amy Whitaker, Heather Darcy Bhandari, Dylan Farley