What Entrepreneurship Means in Art?

The world has become more complex, abstract, and global than ever before.
Globalization, international politics, and climate change shapes our world. The current financialized condition is often perceived as challenging, and the individual struggles with finding ways of both interpreting and acting within an increasingly complex world. The contemporary individual has become an entrepreneur, and is considered solely responsible for his success and failure. He must be effective and creative when solving problems, both in the professional as well as the personal part of life. Entrepreneurship has become a keyword for (economic) success and is highly valued in today’s society. Today, we are expected to act entrepreneurially as individuals and we are educated as early as primary school to become entrepreneurial citizens of today’s society.

But, what is considered entrepreneurial behavior? How is it defined? What possibilities and limitations are inherent in current definitions? How does that affect views on entrepreneurship within the field of arts?

Our approach to work in the artistic field is based on the self-realization of ideas and a desire to influence and discuss issues that are of importance to us.
Through our actions, we express values and our artistic identity. The realization of artistic work involves a number of funding models through which income is generated by mixing different forms of employment and financial support or grants. The consumer of artistic experiences is seldom taken into consideration in the production process, particularly if he or she is not perceived as a co-creator in the process. The consumer rarely generates income for the artist directly, rather, their interest in art creates the potential for presenting artistic work to an audience. Long-term employment opportunities in which educated artists practice their profession are few.
A combination of temporary project employment, teaching positions, commissions, scholarships, and temporary side jobs are often ways of making a living as an artist. Is it possible that the freelance lifestyle of the artist can be defined as entrepreneurial? Is the artist an entrepreneur when he creates his own reality by being creative and innovative when producing artistic work and making a living through limited resources? Are our current views on entrepreneurship and success connected to an economic discourse? Does this render most artists un-entrepreneurial? As a profession, do we need to become better at running businesses?

We live, according to Costas Lapavitsas, in a financialized era in which political determinations define what is “realistic” in today´s society (Lapavitsas 2014). We must keep in mind that what is currently seen as realistic was once impossible, and could not have been thought of or imagined as becoming a part of a future reality. While what was once possible is now seen as unrealistic. Mark Fisher describes his concept of “capitalist realism,” the reality of the current form of capitalism as “... a persuasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action” (Fisher 2009, 16). How we perceive the world is determined by the current language used. Language, as the means by which we think, serves as the bridge between the contemplative mind and the world. Hannah Arendt, as well as many others, identifies (using a philosophical approach to language), the role of language in knowledge production while attempting to demonstrate how our use of language and its concepts affects our thinking (Arendt 1978).

Today, the language used for describing the citizen or the individual in society is dominated by their place as an entrepreneur and an economic subject. Michel Foucault has described the redefined economic figure “...as [the] entrepreneur of himself, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings” (Foucault 2008). An approach to life, work, and the individual as an enterprise one is responsible for managing. This imbues one´s perception of oneself and others with expectations as to how one should act in today’s society. But what does it mean to act entrepreneurially in different fields or industries today? How does the artist act as an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship is a controversial subject within art education. The concept brings forth negative associations due to its perceived connection to capitalism
and profit-seeking.
I would say that entrepreneurship is and has been a natural part of the artistic profession, as there are not and have not been many employment opportunities in the field. As such, many artists have been forced into being innovative in finding ways of making a living. The problem is current views on entrepreneurship and its connection to an economic discourse. To be an entrepreneur today, many believe, is to run a business successfully. From this point of view, most artists cannot be considered entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship education within the arts is seldom adapted to the field. In many surveys and studies a lack of preparatory working-life experience is evident. One reason may be that students at the BA level have difficulty addressing employment issues after their studies. But, more likely, the problem could be that an overly narrow view of entrepreneurship is being presented in art education. Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjorth et al. try to broaden views of and create new movements in entrepreneurship by approaching entrepreneurship not only as an economic phenomenon but as something that involves the whole of society, not merely the economy (Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjorth et al. 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009). While the dominant narrow view is based on identifying and exploiting opportunities for creating a change in the market, the broad view is focused on an ongoing creative process, one driven not by personal gain but by an idea that must be realized within, and with the help of, society.
With the aim of strengthening the links between entrepreneurship and society, we invite others to take part, others that are excluded by the current language used in describing entrepreneurial behavior. With this broadening, we open the way for the production of different kinds of knowledge and begin to recognize it as important. We create new narratives, outside of the dominant ones, by interpreting social, cultural, ecological, and artistic aspects and identifying them as entrepreneurial. According to Hjorth and Björn Bjerke, “entrepreneurship is about the everyday, daily life; the civic practices of living, rather than an extraordinary accomplishment” (Hjorth and Bjerke 2006, 100).

I suggest we use Hjorth´s and Bjerke´s concept of public entrepreneurship (Hjorth and Bjerke 2006) when describing artistic actions and activities in society rather than using concepts such as “artistic entrepreneurship” or “cultural entrepreneurship,” as it reduces the agency of the artist to a producer of market-based products. The artist’s working environment is the public sphere and through the production and presentation of artistic work to the public, he or she
also takes a political position. While the “social entrepreneur,” as a product of an enterprising society, approaches social problems as economic ones, solvable by business logic, the “public entrepreneur” does not try to make such corrections, rather attempting to get people in a community to share and feel participation. Hjorth, Bjerke, and Steyaert makes us aware of the language used in entrepreneurial discourse, as they attempt to adapt the vocabulary in order to enable others that are excluded (for example, artists) to talk about their practice in an entrepreneurial context.

In a discussion on entrepreneurship, the concept of freedom is often highlighted. Artists many times relate to a “freedom as autonomy” within a European
Philosophical tradition, based on individual self-consciousness as a means of maintaining a distance between the self and the world. An approach that is separated, according to Christian Maravelias, from the ruling perspective of “freedom as potential” within the entrepreneurship discourse, wherein the individual is free to exploit the numerous opportunities and chances offered by the world. If freedom as autonomy entails a liberation from power, then freedom as potential in fact requires power, according to Maravelias, “... power to act and seize on opportunities” (Maravelias 2009, 16). The independence and autonomy the that artist seeks has been “kidnapped,” as some artists see it, into something else by entrepreneurial language. Many do not relate to the entrepreneurial opportunist as he or she is playing by the rules of the game as an active player within the
market.

In order to maintain the freedom so central to the arts, we must broaden the contemporary view of entrepreneurship, to become something involving the whole of society and not merely the economy. At the same time, we open the way for the production of various types of knowledge and begin to recognize artistic aspects as important.

Instead, artists are often educated to master entrepreneurial tools in the same manner as other professions. Many self-organized models within the arts are entrepreneurial. The self-organized and the public entrepreneurial have much in common. They are both project-based, often small-scale, and have a connection to physical, virtual, discursive, and emotional places and spaces. Both take on projects that engage others in paying attention to marginalized thinking and phenomena, and making them more central. The art world and the greater cultural field is based on network economics, and an understanding of how the economy works is important. In most cases, after finishing their studies, young artists create communities/studio spaces with other former students.
Eventually, they collaborate on different projects and become, more often than not, a non-profit gallery space. After several years as their individual networks
expands, they head off in different directions to create new communities with others. Since the art market is a reality for very few artists, many must find ways of practicing an artistic profession by acting publicly entrepreneurial with others.

Sources
Arendt, Hannah (1978) The Life of the Mind, vol. 1, Thinking. New York: Harcourt.
Lapavitsas, Costa (2014) Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us
All. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GoQWkyVZq4 (accessed: February
2015)
Fisher, Mark (2009) Capitalist Realism. Hants: O Books.
Foucault, Michel (2008) The Birth of Biopolitic, Lectures at Collége de France,
1978-79. Transl. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hjorth, Daniel and Bjerke, Björn (2006) Public Entrepreneurship: Moving from
Social/Consumer to Public/Citizen. In Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert (eds.) Entrepreneurship as Social Change: A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book.
Cheltenham, UK & Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Eglar, 79-102. DOI: http://
dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781847204424
Maravelias, Christian (2009) Freedom, Opportunism and Entrepreneurialism in
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Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship: A Fourth Movements in Entrepreneurship Book. Cheltenham, UK & Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Eglar, 13-30.
Steyaert Chris and Hjorth Daniel (eds.) (2003) Movements in Entrepreneurship:
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Steyaert Chris and Hjorth Daniel (eds.) (2004) Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship: A Second Movements in Entrepreneurship Book.
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