BOOK: Artist-Run Europe (Practice/Projects/Spaces), Setmargins Press

Since first being published in 2016, the study “Artist-Run Europe: Practice / Projects / Spaces” by Setmargins Press, 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, organisational 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 analyse 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 recognised within the field? How are these spaces organised? Can artist-run spaces develop and be sustained without the need to institutionalise? What do artist-run spaces add to the ecology of the civil society? What can we say about future (or hoped for) trajectories? -Efi Michalarou