Talk: Artist-entrepreneurship

What happens when you combine commercial entrepreneurship and fine art? For me there are two simultaneous directions.

1: Entrepreneurship influences art. This will in turn make the art more commercial. The artist is no longer a fragile soul inspired by forces beyond. If and artist wants to make an impression on the world, she must accept the rules of the game, and the fact that art today is just a more sophisticated product. Produced and sold. Play the game. Examples of this direction includes the fantastic I’m Ivan book and photo exhibition.

2: Art influences entrepreneurship. In the fantasy world, art is done for the art itself. Of course this is not always the case, however, even in a less idealistic version it is still far from the commercial ideal of accumulated profits. I see this as a general artist attitude. An attitude towards every creative project. This attitude can influence entrepreneurship. This is the direction that I am mostly engaged in. In projects like GadeMode and Fashion Week Live, we never started with commercial interests. We started with an idea about creating something. That was were the energy came from. Of course these projects can evolve and become commercial later, but the point remains: they started without it. This, I think can lead to many more successful entrepreneurial projects than most businessplans ever will.

This one hour presentation was given to 80 teachers from Tradium – The Danish Academy of Business and Technology.