ARTIST-RUN EUROPE : PRACTICE/PROJECTS/SPACES
Since first being published in 2016, this groundbreaking study has become a key text on the subject, a practical tool for those running or wishing to set up artist-run spaces, and a source of research for artists, academics and students, seminars, symposia and publications. This 2nd edition includes an updated and expanded index of artist-run spaces, with the inclusion of 50 additional spaces, and featuring spaces from Ukraine for the first time.
Part how-to manual, part history, and part socio-political critique, Artist-Run Europe looks at the conditions, organizational models, and role of artist-led practice within contemporary art and society. The aim is to show how artist-run practice manifests itself, how artist-run spaces are a distinctive and central part of visual art culture, and how they present a complex, heterogeneous, and necessary set of alternatives to the art institution, museum and commercial gallery.
In a self-reflexive, critically questioning process, contributions discuss and analyze areas such as: What position do artist-run spaces occupy within the field of contemporary art today? Should they stand in opposition to or in parallel to other art-world structures? How is value ascribed to these often transitory practices, and is this value recognized within the field? How are these spaces organized? Can artist-run spaces develop and be sustained without the need to institutionalize? What do artist-run spaces add to the ecology of the civil society? What can we say about future (or hoped for) trajectories?