Clair Bötschi

Clair Bötschi, born 1988, is an artist, cultural manager, cultural entrepreneur. He studied »Rethinking Business with Professional Experience« at Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences and followed up with a Master’s degree in Culture + Management in Dresden. His work moves along the overlap between art and economy, where he develops new models of artistic production and economic management. Bötschi utilises economic structures as artistic material and examines, how economic mechanisms can be tranformed by art. This way, the cost and finance plan of an exhibition becomes a large tablecloth for visitors that allows them to experience economic frameworks for art. His experience also shows in his work as cultural manager. For the performance Electrics gGmbH by Pablo Wedel, he developed a utilisation concept for the power plant Luckenwalde. In Stuttgart, he led cultural projects for the art association Wagenhalle and realized festivals like the Kultursommer at Kulturschutzgebiet, Container City Transformation, and the Monte Bruno und das Bergsteiger*innen Programm. Here, he blended artistic, economic, and logistic processes and developed a sustainable production model for large-scale art projects. Bötschi is founder and artistic director of YouTransfer e.V., an art association, that engages with public digital spaces. The first AI-curated scholarship programm for art in digital spaces worldwide he initiated, funded by Stuttgart’s cultural office, questions existing funding structures and tests AI-backed application and selection procedures. He runs a studio for art + economy in Stuttgart, is a lecturer on art in public spaces in Ludwigsburg, and a member of the speaker team of the state group Baden-Württemberg of the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft. At the moment, he further develops the agency for sustainability and waste – a start-up between art, economy, and experiment that plays with opposites on purpose. Bötschi likes to provoke by showcasing how unstable systems make up the basis of innovation – and how chaos can result in new order.