Globally, the average artist’s yearly earnings from art practice is estimated at less than $10,000 US dollars. In the wake of widespread public defunding of the arts, there is mounting pressure on artists and galleries to “innovate or die”. Emerging from this crisis is the seductive but problematic image of the Artist Entrepreneur, a creative entropic force, leveraging the tools of start-up culture and capital to self-disrupt and innovate new models of artistic production. Should artists embrace, subvert or actively resist this new identity? What does it risk?

Participants in The Artist Entrepreneur residency have received mentorship from artist Jeremy Bailey, startup leaders and art world heroes designed to empower and teach participating artists how to use the tools of Silicon Valley to subvert an increasingly dominant and transgressive startup culture now threatening actual arts culture for funding in the wake of broad defunding across Europe.

For  the one night only, Manifexpo at Akadamirommet, Khio students Magnus Myrtveit and Esra Duzen alongside fellow PRAKSIS participants — Brandon Covington Sam-Sumana,
Nicholas John Jones, Kirsty Kross, Magnus Myrtveit, Shameer Nyland Kinniya, Ruben Steinum, Charlotte Teyler, and Tough Guy Mountain — participated in a startup-style 2 day design sprint led by Jeremy Bailey and Nora O Murchú where they pursued product solutions for problems they and their fellow residents have confronted as artists. Further contributions have been made by residents responding to the overall material of the residency that has delved into capitalism, post-capitalism and (im)plausible utopias.

'The Artist Entrepreneur' residency developed by PRAKSIS with Bailey, UKS and The Moving Museum probes the growing pressures from the ‘culture industry’ to require artists to adopt entrepreneurial approaches.