Thoughts & Insights

The Reawakening of a Mummified Artist – A Metabolism of a Very Special Kind

The 5th anniversary of the OUBEY MINDKISS Project was a time to honor its work publically and put it in perspective.

Up to this point the project had simply surged ahead and happened. It had fostered experiences and encounters with people all across the world from a wide range backgrounds and professions, created situations and hard facts, and publicized OUBEY and his works on the internet. And in the resonance space created, over the course of the past few years it had received a steady stream of comments and feedback. And now for the first time in the public spotlight it ventured onto the meta-level of having other people put their own perspectives on what it had achieved thus far.

That two such brilliant and famous thinkers as Professor Peter Kruse and Professor Peter Weibelcame forward to give their views was in itself cause enough for excitement. And on the evening of the 5th May, together with the other guests at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, I was privileged to hear the thoughts of these two pioneering thinkers on the OUBEY MINDKISS Project. Click here to view a short video which gives a general impression of the happening along with some excerpts from their talks.

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Taking as his starting point the question of what a MINDKISS actually means, in his opening address Peter Weibel embarked on an associative train of thought that led us through science, poetry and technology in its exploration of OUBEYs original neologism, and throwing a fascinating light on both its MIND and KISS components.

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Professor Weidel also touched on what in his view made the project such a unique undertaking which is that he sees in it a successful attempt “to transfer this material painting with its material carrier medium into the world of electromagnetic waves. Dagmar Woyde-Koehler has taken these paintings from the old analog world and resituated them in the new digital world. This is an unparalleled undertaking. (…) Because the fact of the matter is that to some extent the painter already was preserved in another storage medium. He was partly mummified, he was already dead. But I can reawaken him by transferring him to digital data.”

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Peter Weibel expresses in a nutshell exactly what we have been doing in the past five years of the OUBEY MINDKISS Project in a creative approach we shall continue to pursue unflaggingly in the years ahead. With Digital Discovery we have already made the next boundary-crossing step in this direction. Weibel‘s statement – but also the enthusiastic response of all our guests to the world debut of this Digital Discovery Technology – is reassuring testimony that shows us how right we were when we first struck out on these unconventional untrodden ways.

Quite a different tour of the horizon was taken in Professor Peter Kruse‘s conversation with the internet publicist Ulrike Reinhard the video of which was screened on the evening of the 5th anniversary happening at the ZKM. In Peter Kruse’s view the three key dimensions of the project are the dimensions of empathy, experiment and provocation.

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Kruse offered not just an unvarnished personal account of his encounter with OUBEYs art and the OUBEY MINDKISS Project. He also pointed out the potential for growth inherent in this project as an open and interactively shaped process and as a cultural experiment in communication. And he also gave an extremely incisive critical analysis of current trends on global markets and the art market in particular, starting with the dominant position of the financial market and the repercussions this has on the overall system affecting every nook and cranny of society – including the cultural sector and art itself.

The guests followed Peter Kruse’s talk with the keenest interest and it provoked many lively discussions during the further course of the evening. Ulrike Reinhard has now written about the project and her conversation with Professor Kruse in her own blog which you can read by clickinghere.

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To sum up from our own standpoint: The OUBEY MINDKISS Project has succeeded in creating a free space which, as Professor Kruse says, is a model for how the general public can and should experience culture and art – free from all market regulation. This is precisely where he locates the project’s potential for provocation. At the same time – as Professor Weibel puts it – the project has also succeeded in endowing with new life the work of an artist who died too young by transferring it from the analog to the digital world.

From my own standpoint I see what is unfolding in the OUBEY MINDKISS Project as an energy-charged metabolism – a very particular kind of metabolism. It draws its life from the primary force of OUBEYs free spirit which finds expression in his paintings. It takes this primary energy and transforms it into completely new and very open processes of discovery and recognition. And by doing so it creates a resonance space which as it grows turns into a space of collective opportunities which generates a continual flow of new impulses. The space picks up the impulse emitted by the art and the art lives and breathes in the space. The project ensures that this type of metabolism can flourish.

Thus OUBEYs spiritual autonomy lives on in the MINDKISS Project in new and unexpected forms. In following his traces I allow myself all kinds of freedom – including the liberty to turn my back on the established art market. I do what I find to be true and meaningful – what I think best accords with OUBEYs way of thinking and working and – not the least of considerations – what gives people all over the world an immense amount of joy and pleasure when encountering his art. If this should have provocative effects, all I can say is that these are unintentional. But they are certainly not devoid of meaning.

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Nothing of what has been achieved so far could ever have been achieved without the enthusiastic and professional support of an ever-growing number of wonderful people across the whole world. Four of these guys – representing countless others – have sent short greetings videos which you can view by clicking here. To them and to all the others I would like to express my deep and heartfelt thanks. You’re simply marvelous and I’m so glad that you’re a part of this great OUBEY MINDKISS Community!

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