Impossible goes analog in a digital age

When Impossible launched its first printed magazine, Impossible to print, this summer, Dazed and Confused and Another Magazine co-founder and counter culture visionary Jefferson Hack was into it.

“Lily has blown me away with Impossible. This is a beautiful magazine, a great first issue, it is going to be highly collectible” he told a crowd who had gathered in the east London bookshop Libreria to hear him discuss it with Impossible’s co-founder Lily Cole.

That the magazine exists at all is testimony to the gift economy upon which impossible is established.

“It is actually a very good example of somebody saying, “Hey, I am a writer, why don’t we make this?” and somebody saying to somebody else “hey, you’re a designer do you want to contribute?” and then saying “hey, you’re a photographer do you want to contribute?” explained Lily. “Everyone kind of put their skills together and as a consequence produced something that is a very collective version.”

When asked why she had produced a print magazine in this digital realm Lily told Jefferson, “I personally spend way too much time consuming content through a screen and it’s a really nice antidote to actually take a book, to actually read a magazine.”

On its punk positivism Jefferson said, “It has that kind of very anarchic feel to it but yet the text and some of the photography is so positive. I think that mix of optimism and rebellion is really powerful and you don’t see it in a lot of places in culture…What you are doing is bringing energies together and trying to find a new path, a new direction to channel energy and anger but with some kind of common ground between points of difference within the culture.”

You can read more about Lily and Jefferson’s thoughts on impossible, the gift economy and the kindness of strangers in the full article published by Second Home.