Start-up art

Start-up art is a curatorial, art historical term designating art that appropriates, adopts and repurposes the discourses, operation modes, strategies and look-and-feel of the entrepreneurial start-up culture, including but not limited to product design, business operations, financing, PR activities, advertising, marketing and sales.

Works are presented often in the form of a fictional company, or actual registered company, and its various real and/or attributed activities, ranging from a webpage or a crowdfunding campaign, through outdoor advertising to actual business transactions and financial operations.

The term does not apply to artists, who simply turned their production into a business operation, the operation per se not being part of the artworks presented.

Examples

• Pure Human by Tina Gorjanc, 2016 - a multifaceted project involving a UK patent application, company logo and visual standards, laboratory work with cloned human tissue, product design, product samples, product photography and advertising copy

• DullTech™ by Constant Dullaart, 2015 - an enterpreneurial project, unique in that it is an actual, successful hardware start-up, not presented by the artist himself as art, but as an answer to a real-world problem; yet the project received publicity and curatorial attention comparable to other projects, designated as art by the artist. It comprises of a start-up company, successful Kickstarter funding campaign, a physical product (a single purpose, boxed, digital video player) and product design, hardware manufacturing chain outsourced to China, Internet shop, promotional visuals, merchandise (t-shirts), shipping and customer service

• Cellout.me by Jeroen van Loon, 2015 - not a start-up or company: the artist is selling his DNA sequence in an online auction. The presentation comprises of the website cellout.me, the artist's actual, full, scientifically sourced genome sequence (380 GB of data), and a gallery installation (sculptural object with computer and screen, displaying scrolling data)

• SOMA by Ivana Bašić, 2014-work-in-progress - company name, mission statement, two products: Ivana Basic®, a static 3D model of the artist, and Ivana Dynamic®, a rigged and posed 3D model of the artist (to be used in 3D rendering software, or with real-time 3D platforms, respectively), product descriptions and promotional visuals

• Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc by Jennifer Lyn Morone, 2013-work-in-progress - inspired by the US Supreme Court's ruling that "corporations are people", the artist turned her self into a corporation, registered in the State of Delaware, USA, with the aim to obtain for her personal data the same level of control and legal protection as corporations are entitled to. Only the company has a legal right to sell or provide her personal data, including images and videos, health information, and financial information. Anybody collecting these data without a contract with the company is exposing themselves to a copyright lawsuit. The project comprises of the corporation, a health monitoring device that the artist wears, and a website with the mission statement and product description (structure of the artist's personal data).

• Nebo by Thomas Thwaites, 2013 - not an actual company: a fictional brand, stylized as a ‘tech start up from the near future’, and four speculative, not fully functional product designs. Nebo is presented as "an online service and range of objects that employ some of the techniques of marketers and advertisers not to make you buy things, but to make you lead a more fulfilling and happier life. Nebo is advertising that influences you to act in your own best interests." In actuality however, the designs are such as to enable unprecedented surveillance and mind-control of the consumer.

• Loophole for All by Paolo Cirio, 2013 - a global performance staged as a faux finance-world fraud operation: The artist was, through website Loophole4All.com, selling openly forged Certificate of Incorporation documents of 200000 real, anonymous, Cayman Islands-registered offshore companies, whose names he uncovered. The premise and punchline of the performance were built on the assumption, that the real owners of these companies, presumably involved in shady business and financial operations, would have their hands tied and would be afraid to publicly (re)claim ownership of their company.

• Everlandia by Martin Bricelj Baraga, 2005-2007 - A fictional-only travel agency, limited realisation: company name, logo, mission statement and an online interactive graphical application.

• Mindbending Software Inc. by codenerror (Robert Praxmarer) and Florian Berger, 2005 - a company developing and selling software, that inserts subliminal messages into games running on a PC, and enables parents to psychologically condition their children, while they are playing "mindless" computer games. The project includes a fully functioning system-level driver that intercepts the OpenGL 3D rendering process on a PC and superimposes custom designed imagery, in subliminal fashion, over popular games like Unreal Tournament 2004. The presentation comprises of the company website, logo, mission statement, a range of specific deployable content (packaged as distinctive products, with trademarks, usage descriptions, advertising visuals, expert reviews and customer testimonials), and a working internet shopping cart.

• Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI) by Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico and ubermorgen, 2005 - an elaborate internet performance, comprising of (actually registered) GTTP Ltd. company; a network of software bots that automatically clicked on banner ads placed on a network of hidden websites; an “AdSense” contract with Google, that generated actual revenue from the botnet's activity; the money from the scheme was used to buy Google shares for GTTP Ltd., with the aim to distribute them to everyone, and consequentially to turn Google into a public company.

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The term has been first coined by this entry on monoskop.org on 17th August 2016.