Entrepreneurship and the universal chicken

Entrepreneurship and the universal chicken

Artist Koen Vanmechelen is trying to create a super-hybrid chicken—a metaphor for diversity and the need for ongoing renewal

There is a paradox in the world. It is a fact that, genetically speaking, we all are ‘bastards’. We are the product of a genetic melting pot and as a species we continue to change and evolve. Yet we fear change. We all are the product of diversity, yet we prefer uniformity. We all need the ‘other’ to survive, yet we fear it. Everything changes, evolves, adapts—yet we find ourselves trying to lock things down. We ‘frame’ things as it were, creating uniform concepts we cherish and get nostalgic about, and that way we hope to avoid or resist change. The art of Koen Vanmechelen addresses this paradox with a clear purpose: he is trying to break down those frames and expose the irony. He is confronting us with our fears. But in the process we are encouraged to embrace diversity and change, since we need it to survive. There is a great lesson in there for entrepreneurs.

The chicken

Koen Vanmechelen comes straight to the point. “I am breeding a chicken as a work of art. Now obviously that is very metaphorical—it has to do with us more than with the chicken. The concept is as follows. Genetically speaking, all chickens today evolved from a single primal chicken that lived thousands of years ago somewhere at the base of Himalayas. But about 7500 years ago we captured the chicken and started the process of domestication. We started changing the chicken, adapting it to our needs. One can speak of an artificial evolution of a living being, transformed into egg-laying stock, meat birds, etc.—all exploits of our thinking. The interesting thing is that some of these chickens have become national symbols. So in Belgium the Mechelse Koekoek was showcased at the World Expo in 1950 to show the world that we had a great meat chicken. In France they have the Poulet de Bresse which is symbolic to the top of gastronomy. It is as this point that we are creating something special that we want to keep as is. We don’t want to change it. But my claim is that this is impossible. It leads to inbreeding and decline. Linking it to entrepreneurship, it is as if you are shutting yourself out from your environment, closing yourself to the world. If you do that you have a serious problem.

I believe in the crossing. It’s a simple principle really. We need the crossing to create new things, and more, to survive. So back to the project, what I’ve done is crossed the Koekoek with the Poulet de Bresse. In the process I have created something new; something we hadn’t known about before. But I did this with the realisation that this cannot last either. Hence I crossed the new chicken with the English Redcap. In this way a cycle develops in which new ideas are constantly being created. The point is that you constantly need to break those frames.

In these times we are moving beyond straightforward production. In the emerging markets like China they produce the prototypes. In my story, we are making the prototypes by crossing things. Referring back to my project, if we cross the Koekoek with the Poulet and create 20 chicks, then not one of those chicks will be the same. But if we breed the Koekoek with itself, then we create 20 identical chicks. That’s production—reproducing one prototype. But cross the prototypes and you create 20 new prototypes. Today, in our context, that should be the focus. We need to cross knowledge, cross ideas with each other and that way create new ideas, new knowledge.

The art

The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is in its 15th year now. In Moscow this year we’re showing the 13th generation, in other words, chickens that carry 13 countries within them, including Belgium, France, the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Cuba, Italy and Russia.

The art itself is expressed in various forms, sometimes in installations with the actual chickens, but also photography, paintings and sculpture. Sometimes it really looks like art as most understand it to be—a painting—but in Moscow, for example, I’m showing people the 13 chickens. I’ll also confront them with a crossing: a cage, containing the hybrid chicken and a Russian chicken.

But it’s the concept, the central idea that underpins it all. I’m trying to nudge people away from categorical perspectives and stimulate free thinking.