Thoughts & Insights

OUBEY, WE and the Arts

Can you imagine a special edition of we_magazine dedicated to WE and the Arts? One in which OUBEY’s art and thinking about art formed something like a linking element between the articles and contributions of a wide range of authors all dealing with art, the Internet and WE from their own perspectives?

When Ulrike Reinhard of the editorial team of we_magazine“ put this question to me some 18 months ago, my spontaneous answer was yes! I had no notion about what kind of outcome the process triggered by this idea would yield. And I couldn’t even imagine the process that would evolve from it. But I did feel very certain that the venture was one well worth embarking on. And now this special edition of we_magazine has been online for two weeks and what’s more will soon be followed by a special limited print edition.

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The all-round view which the magazine succeeds in presenting in my opinion is very intriguing and offers rich rewards. I think that today we are just on the threshold of such interdisciplinary all-encompassing perspectives that cover and network together everything that art best embodies in its own inimitable way. This is what I am now so pleased that I did say “Yes” all that time ago.

Of course finding out what OUBEY himself thought about these themes and issues given our present state of knowledge in 2012 would have added a new and immeasurably valuable dimension of interest to the project. Sadly, this is no longer possible. But I will venture to say at this juncture that the network which has grown up around OUBEY since 2005 represents a form of collective intelligence that thinks ahead of on-going developments in a similar way to how OUBEY always used to do. Viewed in this light, the present edition of we_magazine might represent a further step towards the collectivization of all that OUBEY held dear – one that engages directly with his art, his research, his deep and wide-ranging knowledge and his way of thinking.

Click here to read more about the pioneering work of the WE team.

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