ART INCUBATOR @ SHIFT

Art_Incubator

SHIFT Business Festival – Turku Castle, Turku, Finland
31 May – 1 June 2017

Artists / Art Incubated:
Frank Brümmel
Artturi Elovirta
Empty Art Space (Antti-Juhani Manninen & Antti Turkko)
Halmesmaa X3 (Anu Halmesmaa, Miia Halmesmaa & Mikko Halmesmaa)
Hertta Kiiski
Nestori Syrjälä

Curator / Art Incubator: Ville Laaksonen

Project description:
Art Incubator introduced a curatorial concept developed by Ville Laaksonen, positioning the curator as an operator within an imaginary space — one that challenges habitual perceptions of reality and the structures that define artistic production.

The project proposed that in an increasingly immaterial future of art, the need for a physical exhibition space becomes secondary, even as art remains the foundation for producing objects that embody the cultural memory of an era. The participating artists represented diverse approaches to temporality, materiality, and conceptual presence — from performance and installation to the idea of the artwork as an evolving process.

Presented within the context of the SHIFT Business Festival and realized in collaboration with Arte, Turku’s long-standing artist association and operator of the contemporary art space Titanik, Art Incubator acted as a cross-sector dialogue between art and business. It invited corporate visitors to reflect on creativity, innovation, and value from the perspective of artistic practice — asking, in return, what the art world might learn from entrepreneurial thinking, and how artistic processes themselves could be incubated toward new cultural and societal relevance.