Thoughts & Insights

A Heart´s Desire

Since the 6 July, the largest exhibition in the history of the MINDKISS project, the “Art of Resonance Show” has been taking place in the Mind Museum in Manila. It features 18 analogue paintings by OUBEY together with 8 interactive digital interactions that have emerged from, and correspond with, these analogue paintings. “Why on earth the Philippines of all places? Why Manila?” was a question I was frequently asked in the run-up to the exhibition. There are currently much hotter places for art in Asia. 

Those who know me and the MINDKISS Project will know my answer: I’m not interested in the best venues for art. What I’m interested in is the resonance that people have in their encounters with OUBEY’s art. That’s precisely why Manila is interesting for me. And experience proves me right.

In The Mind Museum Manila even the security guards can’t resist the attraction of the pictures and installations on display, and use their breaks to immerse themselves over and over again in the worlds of images and experiences presented in the show which they actually only have to oversee and protect. What a wonderful resonance to the “Art of Resonance Show”! And that’s just one of many other resonances that will be collected and evaluated by the museum team in the coming months. When the exhibition closes we shall publish them.

The decision for this collaboration was easy for me to make after I met the director of the Mind Museum in person for the first time in October last year. She was immediately enthusiastic about the approach and spirit of the MINDKISS project. And I was immediately convinced of the seriousness of her engagement to present the newly conceived “Art of Resonance Show“ of the MINDKISS project in the rooms of The Mind Museum which are freely available for temporary exhibitions. And the young people of the museum´s fantastic team are extraordinarily dedicated, seriously engaged, thoughtful, careful and excellent in any kind of trouble shooting.

The Mind Museum is the only science museum on the Philippines, and owes its existence to the Bonifacio foundation, which seeks to encourage people to engage with art and, especially children, to engage with science and technology. It’s an adventure park of a kind that I’ve only experienced in San Francisco, the Cité de la Science in Paris, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

So why on earth should I have said “no” when I am invited to present the newly conceived project exhibition that bridges not just science, technology and art but also the analogue and digital experience of art. In a place dedicated to the discovery and exploration of knowledge that humanity has now gained about the universe, planet Earth, its oceans and inhabitants and our own species.

A place that is as indifferent to the esteem of the so-called experts of the established art world, including its doormen and addressees, as I am but which deals with the same questions and topics in which OUBEY’s art finds its source and roots. I hope that this place does not exist only once in this world in Manila but that in the coming years I shall be lucky enough to bring the “Art of Resonance Show” to similar such free and exciting places in other countries and on different continents – being aware that this will definitely not be easy at all.

When it comes to the wonderful, affable collaboration in the preparation and realisation of this exhibition at the Mind Museum in Manila, such good fortune has a name: that of Maria Isabel Garcia, the director. When, as we were touring the show a few hours before its official opening, I told her how extremely glad I was that this collaboration had come about, she replied, “I am more than glad. If our foundation has a heart´s desire, this is the foundation´s heart´s desire.“

Because this has been the case for both of us since we first met in a hotel early one morning at 7am, this heartfelt wish turned into a joint journey with the aim of creating a novel, unique space of experience in which the MINDKISS of OUBEYs art can be felt.

Incidentally, this exhibition is by way of a triple premiere:

  • A premiere for the MINDKISS project, because for the first time 18 analogue paintings by OUBEY could be presented together with 8 corresponding digital installations which open up completely new virtual worlds of experience with these analogue pictures.
  • At the same time, it’s a premiere for the Mind Museum which is providing a great space and setting for the Art of Resonance Show with its first interdisciplinary exhibition on the theme of “Bridging Art, Science and Technology”. It’s also the first temporary exhibition to be held by the museum since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in the Philippines in 2019.
  • And finally it’s also a premiere for OUBEY‘s biggest work GENESIS, which can be seen here for the first time in its full analogue 4 x 2 meters, together with composer and singer Natalia Kies‘s audiovisual musical resonance on the work and an impressive immersive 360° installation visualised by the light and media artist Andrey Vrady, accompanied by an imposing soundscape by the composer Natalia Kies.

As I celebrate this new exhibition here today in some way, of course I am not forgetting the previous eight stops of the Global Encounter Tour on four continents. Each of them was unique in terms of the particular resonance it gave to OUBEYs art. From the scientists in a symposium at the Goethe Institute in San Francisco and the attendees at an international management conference in Vienna to the students of the CEU in Budapest, now shut down by Orban government, and the children, teachers, and parents of a Maori school in Wellington/New Zealand and the artists from Uganda and Kenya at NIAAD in Kampala.

Meanwhile the ideas slowly formed for a completely new, stimulating and interdisciplinary exhibition concept, and were shaped and realised step by step from 2019 to 2022. They are now all presented to the public for the first time at the Mind Museum in Manila. Without all the earlier encounters and stop-overs, the present exhibition would not have been possible. This is why I would like now to give my heartfelt thanks to all the people who helped to make it possible that the previous stop-overs and the twenty five Encounters with scientists and individuals of various professions could be realised. The pool of inspiration from which the project can draw has steadily grown larger and will continue to grow. Because the journey of the “Expanding Universe of OUBEY MINDKISS” will continue.

 

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