How to live and succeed like an artist

There are countless books, podcasts, and coaches for aspiring artists who promise success if you follow their advice. However, by focusing on how to succeed rather than on what it means to succeed in art, they assume that we agree on the goal: visibility, prizes, biennials, and collectors. This leads to a neat ranking of money and fame – despite Béla Bartók’s reminder that "competitions are for horses, not artists."

This themed evening offers a different proposition: to treat “success” not as a finish line, but as a question that can be approached through artistic experience, philosophical reflection, and psychological insight.

This evening will be offering a lively mix: readings (poems, notes, detours, failures), psychological studies on how we value art and those who produce it, and an open discussion that welcomes artists and non-artists alike.

After all, the “artistic lifestyle” has long been an aspirational one: not because it guarantees glamour, but because it experiments with attention, risk, freedom, and meaning.

Program:

Keynote:

Dr. Matthew Pelowski, psychologist, head of ARTIS (Art Research on Transformation of Individuals and Societies) Lab, Vienna University

What (empirically) could be meant by a memorable, successful work?

Several years’ of theoretical and empirical studies on the emotional, societal, cognitive, and embodied things that the arts do (and often don’t do) to us.

Matthew Pelowski is Associate Professor of Cognitive and Neuroaesthetics in the Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, and is the Head of the ARTIS Lab (Art Research on Transformations of Individuals and Society, www. artislab.org).

He has developed a number of interdisciplinary research programs focused specifically on the empirical study of art engagements as these impact emotion, perceptions, cognition, the brain, and the body. He has also branched out to investigations of art in multiple domains from the lab to the museum, the city, and in our homes and everyday lives, and also has a long-standing interest in art production and creativity. He is the Coordinator for the EU-Horizon 2020 Consortium project TRANSFORMATIONS: Societal challenges and the arts, and his lab is an affiliate of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe and the Steinhardt School at New York University, Jameel Arts & Health Network.

Book presentation

‘How to live and succeed like an artist’

with:

Marie Pircher, artist, Zeichnung und Druckgraphik, Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien

Hanka Taschenziegel, artist, Sprachkunst, Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien

Dr. Klaus Speidel, art critic, philosopher, curator, University of Applied Arts Vienna / AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

further program: Anna Biebl is reading a text together with Hanka Taschenziegel. Momomko Berthold will be reading a new text that was created in Klaus Speidel’s current seminar.

The book How to live and succeed like an artist is an “anti-manual”, which was independently put together by students from different departments as part of a seminar with the same title led by Dr. Klaus Speidel. It includes both collaborative work and notes from the seminar, as well as contributions from individual students (see the full list below). The seminar used Derek Sivers' book How to Live as a springboard to guide students in questioning and developing their artistic self-image and took place from 2024–2025.

Klaus Speidel is an art and image theorist, art critic, and curator. He obtained his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris on the subject of visual storytelling, teaches at the University of Applied Arts, and recently became director of the art program ‘artloop’ at the ‘AIT Austrian Institute of Technology’. In exhibitions and publications, he has repeatedly explored how art can have an impact beyond the art world and intervene in social processes. In doing so, he has collaborated with Matthew Pelowski, among others. His most recent work focuses on the impact of AI on art and society. In 2025, he founded the Vienna Conversations of AI.

List of authors / performers/ participating students:

• Lina Bamberg, Painting & Animated Film, Prof. Eisler

• Momoko Berthold, TransArts

• Anna Biebl, Performer

• Lea Bredenbals, Sculpture and Space

• Benjamin Jakob Enders, TransArts

• Francis Grill, Applied Photography & Time-Based Media

• Felix Hell, Sculpture and Space

• Nikolaus Kohout, Painting & Animated Film, Prof. Eisler

• Stefanie Krispin, Drawing and Printmaking

• Dana van der Neut, Painting & Animated Film, Prof. Eisler

• Jonathan Pielmeier, Sculpture and Space

• Marie Pircher, Drawing and Printmaking

• Nikolija Stanojević, Painting & Animated Film, Prof. Eisler

• Hanka Taschenziegel, Language Arts (Creative Writing)

• Alexandra Terekhova, Architectural Design 3,

• Yuanyuan Zhou, Sculpture and Space