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A Happy Venture – brand eins Zooms in on OUBEY, Originality and a Love Story

“We need many more such people who strike out on new ways of thinking – and who aren’t afraid if some label them as weirdos” says Gabriele Fischer, editor-in-chief of the business magazine brand eins in her foreword to the latest edition, citing OUBEY as one such figure. It’s a good point of departure for the special theme of this edition – originality.

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In fact Professor Peter Kruse expressed similar sentiments in his opening address for the OUBEY Global Tour stopover in Berlin in March 2013 (blogpost about this in April 2013). And the blog entitled Best Fitted to Cope with Complexity written for the Drucker Society Europe in November 2013 makes explicit links between OUBEYs art and his unbridled free-ranging creativity and the demands management has to meet in times of ever increasing complexity. This is exactly the point where Wolf Lotter takes up the gauntlet in his introduction to the latest issue of brand eins where he does a wonderfully refreshing job of demolishing those established and degenerate notions of originality we’re all so familiar with.

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“Originality is an irritant. It’s seen as idiosyncratic – in the sense of peculiar, funny, facetious. Yes, it’s quite nice. But also a bit over the top. This is the old familiar strain we’ve all learnt. But just where have we learnt it?

The high priests of this school of thought are those who have been telling us what is what ever since the 19th century: politicians and managers from the caste of civil servants whose thinking is rooted in fixed patterns and routines. In this world originality is seen as disturbing and those who produce original work are viewed as disturbed.” (pages 42-50)

So far so good: this is all so clear and logical that we might be forgiven for thinking it’s more in the nature of a leisurely stroll than a venture fraught with risk. The danger zone comes when this exploration of originality includes a detailed article on OUBEY and the origins of the MINDKISS Project. With the subtitle: A Love Story. A love story in a business magazine? About originality? About OUBEY? Would this article really be able to express what from my point of view is essential when talking about OUBEYs originality? There was no guarantee. But I said to myself, if the people on this magazine can’t do it, then who can? But they did!

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The love story is a private story of course that for almost ten years I was only prepared to talk about in private conversation, certainly never to a magazine. And now it’s gone public. The response I’ve received shows a good deal of respect, great sympathy and much deep feeling. It reassures me that all my fears were unfounded. Because the story of OUBEY and me has a great deal to do with respect and love for the originality of human existence. With the love of freedom, independence of mind, individuality, the right to be different, the right to be uncompromising. In its own highly unconventional and idiosyncratic way, brand eins has succeeded in creating a genuinely authentic expression of what lies at the roots of OUBEYs art and the approach that shapes the MINDKISS Project. My compliments and thanks to Erwin Koch, the author.

 

Yet whoever wishes to discover and understand the unique quality of OUBEYs originality and the richness of its spiritual and artistic dimensions must delve much deeper into the issues and questions that drove him to do what he did and drove him to do it in his own inimitable way. This is precisely what the MINDKISS Project seeks to do. Nurturing such understanding and facilitating such discovery is one of the central aims of the project. And it’s something that shines through between the lines of the brand eins story as well. Could this possibly mark the next phase of growth in the evolution of the project? We shall see.

Source: www.brandeins.de

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