Imp Kerr (born June 6, 1980,

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

, Sweden) is a Swedish-French artist living in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, mostly known for her fake

American Apparel American Apparel Inc. is a North American clothing retailer. The brand began with operating retail stores between the late 1980s and late 2010s. Its operations are based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Canadian businessman Dov Charney in ...

advertisement campaign. She is ''

The New Inquiry ''The New Inquiry'' is an online magazine of cultural and literary criticism, established by Mary Borkowski, Jennifer Bernstein and Rachel Rosenfelt in 2009 and administered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation. The magazine's website updates da ...

''s creative director, and runs the blog The New Shelton Wet/Dry.

Early life and education

Kerr spent her childhood and teenage years in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France. She moved to New York in 1999, where she graduated from NYU with a degree in magazine

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...

and a minor in philosophy. Kerr has a sister, Rosa, who is three years older than she is. Some bits of Kerr's life were documented on her blog "stereohell", but most of the content was taken off at the end of 2009. The same content was then reposted, in a fragmented and augmented version, on "shines like gold," an experimental blog she runs for The New Inquiry.

Fake American Apparel ads

In 2007, Kerr started a fake

ad campaign in New York, which was covered on several blogs. "For the uninitiated, over the past few months, a NYC prankster has created several bawdy two-color parodies of AA ads complete with real ad headlines." On September 9, 2008, a video posted on Stereohell.com revealed that the fake ads were

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

mockups, something nobody had suspected for one year. American Apparel ran a tribute ad on the back cover of ''

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

'' (November, 2008), showing a compilation of the fake ads.

Wall Street Casino

In December, 2008, Imp Kerr created a set of architectural drawings portraying

investment bank Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources into something expected to gain value over time". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broade ...

s as Las Vegas

casino A casino is a facility for gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shops, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos also host live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, conce ...

s. Imp Kerr's vision was confirmed by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', in an editorial titled "Wall Street Casino," published on April 28, 2010: "Banks like Goldman turned the financial system into a casino. Like gambling, the transactions mostly just shifted money around." The drawings were shown in the group exhibition Spacer:One at the Tribeca Grand in New York (2010) and featured in ''

n+1 N1, N.I, N-1, N=1, or N01 may refer to: Information technology * Nokia N1, an Android tablet * Nexus One, an Android phone made by HTC * Nylas N1, a desktop email client * Oppo N1, an Android phone * N1, a Sun Microsystems software brand now ...

'' Occupy #4, April 2012.

DNA-based prediction of Nietzsche's voice

In 2015, Imp Kerr conceptualized a protocol designed to predict the voice of a deceased person (philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...

in the case study) based on genotype data. To generate the voice, a vocal tract and larynx were 3D-printed. In 2020, researchers used a similar procedure to recreate the voice of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy—by 3D-printing a replica of his vocal tract. Imp Kerr study was covered and presented as real on the Canadian public radio CBC during the show As It Happens on March 20, 2015, and commented as a "piece of performance art" elsewhere. "Impressed with the scientific imaginativeness and attention to detail — the artist knows the relevant science (and has a terrific ear for the conventions of scientific communication)," wrote Jason Eisner, Professor at Johns Hopkins University.Open Culture, March 23, 201
OpenCulture.com
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References

External links

The New Shelton wet/dry

Imp Kerr on the New Inquiry

Gawker articles about the Fake AA campaign

Animal New York articles about the Fake AA campaign

Copyranter articles about the Fake AA campaign

Impkerr.com

Article about Imp Kerr on Beautiful Decay

Shines Like Gold on Salon.com

Imp Kerr, Supermarket of Art, The Daily, 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kerr, Imp 21st-century American artists Artists from New York City Culture jamming Hoaxes in the United States Advertising and marketing controversies 1980 births Living people Swedish expatriates in the United States Artists from Uppsala