A Masterpiece

When I was young, someone told me about a Japanese film that brought the twilight of chivalry to life in a more powerful and gripping way than anything else he had ever read or seen on the subject. The film was called “Seven Samurai“, directed by Akira Kurosawa. 

When I finally saw the film for the first time, I was impressed by the story and the way it was told on screen: thrilling, dynamic, dramatic—and at the same time full of humanity. The film highlights the divide between social classes, the inner conflicts of the characters, their weaknesses, and their courage in the struggle for survival.

At that time, I had already delved a bit into German cinema during the silent film era, as well as into directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders and their films, which for me represented something like the resurrection of cinematic art in Germany after 1933. Akira Kurosawa, however, had been a complete unknown to me until then.

Soon after, I met OUBEY. Already during one of our first long day-and-night conversations, we started talking about cinema. He raved about Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Barry Lyndon,” Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” and Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” I hadn’t seen  any of these films at the time.

I told him about Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” Fassbinder’s thirteen-part “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” Wenders’ “The State of Things,” and also Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”—films that he, in turn, hadn’t seen until then.

From then on, we spent a considerable part of our lives together watching movies—at the cinema whenever possible, otherwise on VHS or later on DVD at home.

When we watched *The Seven Samurai* together for the first time, we began by discussing the historical and human dimensions of the story. Then OUBEY explained to me how masterfully Kurosawa had woven direction, cinematography, acting, editing, sound, music, and visual rhythm into a single organic whole of outstanding quality.

For my part, I was struck above all by the film’s immediate impact. OUBEY, moreover, understood how this impact was achieved thanks to Kurosawa’s masterful direction. Anyone who would like to learn more about Kurosawa’s filmmaking craftsmanship can watch the video “The Directing Genius of Akira Kurosawa Explained”, which uses concrete examples to demonstrate what OUBEY explained to me back then.

OUBEY’s extraordinary ability to develop analyses of even the most complex matters on the spot with almost surgical precision has amazed and impressed me time and time again.

One of OUBEY’s paintings is titled “Samurai.” The title not only evokes the culture of Japan’s noble martial artists but is, above all, a reference to Akira Kurosawa and his film “Seven Samurai”. That´s why you find a reference in the Spark about the art of film making in the Matrix Room of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, too.

To this day, Kurosawa is regarded by many directors as a towering master. The list of filmmakers who refere him as a “Maestro” ranges from George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg: “Where to start with Kurosawa“.

When Kurosawa struggled to find producers for his films in his later years, Lucas, Coppola, and Spielberg helped him with their contacts at Hollywood studios and also invested in his film projects themselves as producers.

Such solidarity did not merely move OUBEY. It also reinforced his conviction that there is a spiritual bond between people through art. That friendship can arise from a shared passion. And sometimes even a community of masters who defend the freedom of art against the constraints of profit-driven commercial thinking.

 

A Master

In the spring of 1990, OUBEY and I traveled together for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall through Berlin and what was then the GDR. It was a time when past, present, and future coexisted here in an indescribable way.

Back then, OUBEY purchased a copy of the book’s “licensed edition for the German Democratic Republic,” which had just been published in East Berlin: Akira Kurosawa – Something Like an Autobiography. Today, this edition of the book is a rarity.

A few years ago, I rediscovered it while moving and only recently read it myself. I can’t recall ever having read an autobiography written with such un , clear, and simple prose, yet one that tells the story of the author’s experiences in such a compelling and moving way. Kurosawa, who once earned his first money as a screenwriter and wrote the screenplays for all his films himself, has mastered the art of storytelling. His book thrives on the same uncompromising clarity that, paired with deep humanity, is also found in his films.

He recounts his family life and school years during his childhood and youth in the authoritarian Japan of the 1910s to 1930s—as the son of a strict father and a descendant of the samurai. This conservative father believed in the educational power of film and encouraged his sons to go to the movies regularly. German, French, and American films, in particular, shaped the young Kurosawa.

In an extensive footnote, he lists nearly a hundred films he saw between the ages of nine and nineteen (1919–1929) that made a particular impression on him—including Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” (1921), Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1926), and Luis Buñuel’s “An Andalusian Dog” (1929). Today, these works are classics. Back then, they were avant-garde.

He saw these films as a very young man, just as they were first released in theaters. I know from my own experience what an impact that can have, for my first cinematic experiences at the ages of seven and eight remain in my memory to this day. For Kurosawa, the early history of film was intertwined with his own history as a director.

The last sentence of his autobiography reads: “Nothing says as much about a creative person as his work.”

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. That is why, for over twenty years, I have primarily let OUBEY’s artistic work speak for itself. And yet, with his autobiography, Kurosawa demonstrates that there is a story of the creative individual that is absolutely worth telling—one that is inextricably linked to their work.

This book is far more than a memoir. It is a work in its own right. In it, you learn a great deal about Japan in the 1920s through the 1940s. About school, education, and the military. About filmmaking under the most difficult circumstances and the importance of truly good friends and teachers. Above all, however, you get to know Akira Kurosawa as a person.

It’s a good thing OUBEY bought this book back then. It’s a good thing I rediscovered it years later and have now read it. When I decided to honor Kurosawa and “The Seven Samurai” in the OUBEY MINDSPACE series on film art, I hadn’t read it yet. Today, I am grateful to Akira Kurosawa not only for his films, but also for leaving us this story of his life—masterfully told by himself.

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There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse lies a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I’ll be telling these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the team at Kubikfoto³ for the outstanding design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already been honored with three prestigious international design awards—including, most recently, the 2025 Red

Since the 1930s, research has repeatedly drawn attention to the highly developed intelligence and fundamentally peaceful nature of whales and dolphins. Initial efforts to protect whales were undertaken; particularly endangered species, such as the humpback whale, which at the time numbered only about 100 individuals, were placed under international protection; and the first protected zones were established.

Nevertheless, in the 1960s, whaling on the world’s oceans remained a common practice, while at the same time, a different kind of business involving these marine creatures was launched  in SeaWorld parks around the world: in small, artificially constructed pools, orcas and dolphins, deprived of their freedom, performed acrobatic tricks for a paying audience.

Then, in 1974, a book titled “The Spirit in the Waters—A Book in Honor of the Consciousness of Whales and Dolphins,” edited by Joan McIntyre, was published. To my knowledge, it was the first book to compile the findings of various researchers on the intelligence and social behavior of whales and dolphins into a comprehensive anthology, making them accessible to a wider public.

“But how is it for that other mind, the mind in the waters? How is it for these enormous, alien brains that traverse the oceans, whose songs ring out, which dream, which dwell on distant memories, which school one another in decency and morals? What does it look like in the spiritual world of a creature whose brain is larger and possibly more complex than ours and which cannot translate its will into world-changing action – if only because it has no hands?”

When OUBEY and I read this book for the first time in 1984, ten years after its publication in Germany, we were impressed and moved by the encounters with whales and dolphins and the stories of experiences with them recounted here. The pathos of esoteric whims was equally foreign to both of us. From our perspective, however, this was about knowledge and a fundamental understanding of facts. The idea that other living beings inhabiting this Earth or its oceans might possess consciousness seemed unimaginable to most people— , at least at that time. That they are intelligent and capable of learning was, after all, no longer in dispute. After all, intelligence agencies have often used the occasional dolphin for their espionage operations and still do so today.

But that they possess consciousness? Don’t they simply follow a genetic-biological program? How could they gain insights that would constitute consciousness, when they know only the elements of water and air and nothing of life on land? And where would they get the free will to make decisions?

We discussed these and many more questions. With questions of this kind, our aim was not to find an answer, certainly not the one true and correct one. In these conversations, our own consciousness opened up to possibilities we had not previously considered. Our self-perception as a species was constantly being put into perspective, without ever underestimating it.

Today, one can find many excellent scientific reports and impressive videos on this topic online, most of which have been published in the last five years. Fifty years ago, Joan McIntyre’s book was a completely new source of insight and inspiration, at least for OUBEY, to whom and to whales and dolphins we have therefore dedicated a special Spark in the OUBEY MINDSPACE:

By the way: 50 million years ago, the ancestors of whales and dolphins still lived on land when, during the Eocene epoch, a major climate change began that caused temperatures and water levels to rise drastically. 10 million years later, they had completely and successfully shifted their habitat to the sea. A unique and impressive evolutionary process that, as a species-specific life and world experience spanning such a long period of time, can justify the idea that something like consciousness may indeed have emerged in this process—whatever that may be.

OUBEY would have been delighted to learn that India officially recognized dolphins as non-human persons in 2013. And even more so that in 2024, the New Zealand Maori, together with the indigenous peoples of Tahiti and the Cook Islands, adopted a joint declaration declaring whales to be legal persons.

If you’ve read this episode, you can perhaps imagine how thrilled and happy I was when nature and whale filmmaker Daniel Opitz, founder of the Ocean Mind Foundation, promised me in 2011 an encounter with an original image of OUBEY on camera in his second home, Maui, Hawaii. Here you can watch the video of this extraordinary encounter.

 

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There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the great design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.

Countless poems and songs have been devoted to its cool light in the dark of night. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata touches us deeply in the soul through its compositional perfection; Debussy’s Clair de Lune lifts us up into floating states of bliss. Jules Verne´s science fiction novel “From the Earth to the Moon” described the journey to our satellite a full century before Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon—astonishingly precise and visionary at the same time. In 1902, pioneer Georges Méliès ventured a cinematic adaptation of this material, creating a milestone in film history, to which Martin Scorsese paid a loving tribute a hundred years later with his film Hugo Cabret . Pink Floyd devoted an entire album to The Dark Side of the Moon, and Bob Dylan, in his epic love song  Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, let the moonlight swim in the eyes of the celebrated beauty.

 

Still from "A Trip to the Moon", directed by Georges Méliès (1902)

Still from “A Trip to the Moon”, directed by Georges Méliès (1902)

Seen up close, however, the Moon loses its romantic aura. Viewed through a powerful telescope, it reveals a gray, dusty surface covered with craters. Thus, the term “moonscape” became synonymous with inhospitable, desolate regions. Yet the Moon’s influence on Earth is immense: its gravity stabilizes Earth’s axis, causes the tides, affects the biorhythms of certain plants and animals—and presumably even the female fertility cycle. For our ancestors, the Moon was also a celestial body of great spiritual significance.

John F. Kennedy’s announcement to send a human to the Moon within the decade of the 1960s was an expression of the systemic rivalry of that era—but also a testament to pioneering spirit and visionary ambition. On July 20, 1969, this seemingly impossible feat became reality: Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon as the first human being.

 

Screenshot from the Spark about Space Colonies in the OUBEY MINDSPACE

Screenshot from the Spark about Space Colonies in the OUBEY MINDSPACE

The exploration of space and human spaceflight had fascinated both OUBEY and me from an early age—independently of one another, long before we met. After we got to know each other, we felt closely connected, not least because we shared a keen interest in the cosmos, its phenomena, mysteries, and history. We celebrated special missions such as the journey of the two Voyager probes Voyager program – Wikipedia into interstellar space or the – initially rather bumpy – launch of the Hubble Space Telescope A friend in space – OUBEY MINDKISS. We were deeply moved by the statement of many astronaut who had been to space and summarized their most important insight from this experience as follows: We went out as technicians, we returned as conscious human beings.

What Aristotle had already recognized in the 4th century BCE, and what Magellan practically proved with his circumnavigation of the globe in the 16th century, received its final visual confirmation through images of the Earth floating freely in dark space—of a beauty that is hard to surpass. Not growing accustomed to this sight, but encountering it again and again with reverence and awe, evokes a humility in thinking about the interconnectedness of existence that hardly anything else can achieve.

When our Earth was still young, about 4.5 billion years ago, it was shaken by a massive collision with a Mars-sized protoplanet. Debris of rock, dust, and molten material was hurled into space, gathered in orbit, and eventually formed the Moon through gravity. This is why the lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions so closely resemble those of Earth. Beyond all romance, there is indeed a kind of kinship between Earth and Moon, which has been orbiting it at a distance of around 380,000 kilometers for billions of years—rendering valuable service along the way.

Screenshot from the Spark about Space Exploration in the OUBEY MINDSPACE

Screenshot from the Spark about Space Exploration in the OUBEY MINDSPACE

Artemis II is scheduled to launch in a few weeks. For the first time in more than fifty years, a crew will once again travel into orbit around the Moon—still without a landing, but in preparation for Artemis III. The mission follows a so-called free-return trajectory. This special flight geometry makes it possible to use the Moon’s gravity as a natural return ticket: even in the event of a complete failure of the main engine, the capsule would return safely to Earth without additional fuel. The laws of physics serve here as the ultimate backup propulsion system.

Public interest today is not comparable to the hype surrounding Apollo 11 at the time. This could change, however, if Artemis III marks the first time since 1972 that humans set foot on the Moon again. And probably even more so when construction begins on the planned base camp, from which the first two-year Mars expedition could launch in as little as 20 years, or even sooner. Since the moon has no atmosphere, no air resistance, and no gravity, the launch conditions here are much more favorable than on Earth. By then, there will also be flowing water on the moon, which is currently still bound in the ice of the Shackleton crater but can be thawed.

As back then, the purpose of such missions is also being questioned today—not least because of the enormous costs. Yet it has never been spaceflight that prevented us from doing our earthly homework or from taking responsibility for ecological balance and peaceful coexistence.

OUBEY had a clear stance on this. What for some was an irreconcilable contradiction belonged inseparably together for him—in his very own vision of the future of humanity and the Earth. Some of his thoughts on this can be heard in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Jules Verne would probably have taken great delight in it. 🌙

OUBEYs statements can be found in these two rooms at the MINDSPACE:

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There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the great design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.

The ribbon was named after the Leipzig mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius, whose name thus went down in history. His colleague, the mathematician Johann Benedict Listing from Göttingen, can now only be found in the archives.

Mathematically speaking, the Möbius strip is a “non-orientable manifold.” Top becomes bottom, outside becomes inside, beginning becomes end. In this respect, it not only challenges the established categories of our perception, but also calls them into question. It challenges us to allow new perspectives and to recognize that boundaries are often illusions.

Due to its unique shape, it has become a symbol of what we call infinity. But what is infinity, and what does it mean? Even if we cannot answer this question, the Möbius strip at least offers us the opportunity to realize that there are realities to which the supposed law of nature, that everything must have a beginning and an end, does not apply.

If this exists on a small scale, why not on a large scale?

This exciting question has always preoccupied OUBEY. And when we discussed it, sooner or later we came to the unanimous conclusion that we favor the idea of infinity, even if we ultimately do not understand it and, of course, cannot prove it.

Since its discovery, the Möbius strip has left its own unique mark as a silent mirror of human experience of the world. Numerous references can be found in films, novels, paintings, and scientific theories.

I would like to briefly present two examples that were particularly interesting and significant for OUBEY.

And now, for a brief moment, the Möbius loop also appears in a spark of the cosmic space in the OUBEY MINDSPACE when it comes to the phenomenon of time – as a symbol of infinity.

 

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There are six rooms in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the design of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.

Effortlessly, masterfully, and radically, he moved across musical genres, resisting the normative force of the mainstream more stubbornly than perhaps any other musician and composer of the 20th century.

Shaped by Stravinsky, Puccini, Webern, and Varèse, his musical output remains a unique convergence of avant-garde, classical music, rock, jazz, and electronic sound. Whether one likes his work or not, this alone makes him a rarity — and a stroke of luck. Kent Nagano conducted Zappa’s orchestral works; Pierre Boulez attended a Zappa concert in Paris in 1980 Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger – Wikipedia, which led to a fruitful collaboration. In Europe, Zappa’s compositions found appreciation and recognition unmatched anywhere else, least of all in the United States.

Zappa not only dissolved boundaries between musical styles, he also violated the behavioural codes of a society that preferred the façade of truth to truth itself. In the 1960s and 70s, his fiercely independent spirit unsettled the puritan-influenced social fabric of the United States. It brought him trouble from many sides, yet never stopped him from following his own uncompromising path.

Frank Zappa could be razor-sharp and humorous at the same time — witty, profound, blunt, satirical, political, courageous.
Free in spirit, inventive in composition, and strict with his band while on tour. Admired by some, despised by others, often triggering tumult during concerts — concerts he sometimes ended prematurely or finished with his back turned to the audience.

A notorious chapter in pop history is the 1971 incident at the Montreux Rainbow Theatre, when an audience member threw a flare onto the stage, igniting a fire that destroyed not only the hall but the entire theatre. Deep Purple immortalized the event in their song Smoke on the Water

OUBEY’s fascination with Zappa and his music began in the mid-1970s, when he first heard the album One Size Fits All. A concert by Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in Cologne at the end of the decade was the first major live concert he had ever attended. That Zappa arrived in a limousine seemed odd but acceptable. That he played the concert rather “unfriendly” due to bottle-throwing from the audience was, however, a sobering experience. For a while, other composers and musicians moved to the foreground.

Screenshot from The MIND SPARK “Music – Frank Zappa”

When The Yellow Shark The Yellow Shark – Album von Frank Zappa | Spotify  was released in 1993, his interest resurfaced and matured into a deep appreciation for the work’s complexity, originality, and brilliant live performance with Ensemble Modern. It was the same Zappa — and yet not the same he had seen live at 18. When he learned of Zappa’s early death shortly afterwards, he revisited the discography and rediscovered him all over again.

I vividly remember an afternoon when a fascinating spectacle of sound filled the room — played loudly through the magnificent B&W speakers with tweeters and subwoofer. OUBEY had chosen the speakers and the system after extensive research and countless tests, connecting them with a high-end power cable. Sound quality mattered to him deeply. Years earlier, he had equipped his studio with excellent T&A speakers that remain there to this day.

I listened carefully. I did not recognize the music. It was The Yellow Shark. Until then, OUBEY had only played it in the studio. I asked him what this wonderful music was. “That’s Zappa?” I exclaimed in surprise. It was fantastic. I myself had gone through an earlier Zappa phase — long before I knew OUBEY — with Camarillo Brillo and 200 Motels. From then on, we appreciated him together.

On November 4, 2005, Ensemble Modern — which had collaborated closely with Zappa in his final years and had already performed and recorded The Yellow Shark live under his direction — played the “Shark” at the Konzerthaus Baden-Baden. It was an unforgettable, magnificent concert.

 

Screenshot from the MIND SPARK “Music – Frank Zappa”

Nearly twenty years later, when the question arose which musicians and which original works should appear in the OUBEY MINDSPACE, it was clear to me that Frank Zappa had to be included — ideally with a track from The Yellow Shark. This choice was about both his music and his unwavering commitment to artistic creativity.

To use the music, I needed an author’s licence. I could only obtain it from Zappa’s family, who have preserved his musical legacy since his death. To my delight, the licence was granted without difficulty, and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Zappa family.

The MindSpark, in which we now hear a one-minute excerpt from “Uncle Meat” from The Yellow Shark is, for me, not only a musical highlight but — through the previously unpublished painting from OUBEY’s computer-art series Zosch and Zorro — also a visual one within this room of the OUBEY MINDSPACE.

“ZZZ” – OUBEY Computer Art

Through the integrated Frank Zappa quote, it also reflects OUBEY’s own view of the relationship between art and the market: “I think that any artistic decision that is based on whether or not you are going to make money is not really an artistic decision. It’s a business decision.”

To anyone who wants to learn something genuine about Frank Zappa, I highly recommend Thorsten Schütte’s documentary Eat That Question – Frank Zappa In His Own Words .

 

The OUBEY MINDSPACE consists of six rooms. Each contains five different Mind Sparks, each offering impulses of its own. Behind every Spark and every impulse lies a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was — and how he was. These stories are told here by me.

My thanks go to the team of Kubikfoto³ for the outstanding design of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already received three prestigious international design awards — most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.

After all, there have always been more than enough examples of the anti-thesis at all times, including the present day.

OUBEY came across the Monadology at an early age and was fascinated by the metaphysics of Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz on which it was based. As a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, metaphysician, mastermind of what we now call the computer and much more, he is still regarded by many as the last true universal genius.

And so OUBEY dedicated one of his early paintings not to the celebrated Isaac Newton but to Leibniz and his Monadology which had long gone unrecognised, calling it “The Journey of the Monads”.

Over the past four months, as part of the “Art of Resonance” show in the Mind Museum in Manila this painting has been viewed and enjoyed by more people than ever before. This alone would be reason enough to take a closer look at Leibniz’s Monadology

Then recently I read a commentary that referred to the thesis of the best of all possible worlds, only to reduce it to absurdity in light of the abysses into which peoples and nations are still plunging in the 21st century – as though history were nothing to learn from for the future and with this justification at the same time to call into question the divine origin of the world.

I do not feel called upon to philosophise on the existence of a God at this point. But I will say this much: it is striking how easily the inadequacy or even non-existence of a God comes to mind when bad things happen to us whether individually or collectively, caused by natural forces or by the brutal violence people and entire nations inflict on other people and other nations, as we are experiencing directly or indirectly today. And this is especially true when even the most barbaric atrocities are committed in the name of a god.

What fascinated OUBEY about Leibniz’s monadology was less its associated theodicy (justification of God) than its inherent understanding of the freedom, uniqueness and indivisibility of every monad, i.e. every soul in this universe. Bold and still far ahead of even many of today’s thinkers, for Leibniz not only his own human species, but everything that exists in the universe belonged to the animated beings.

Humans – at least according to the current state of knowledge – are the only species on this planet with a free will that goes beyond innate instinctive and generic behaviour and enables decisions that no other being can make. And, if the situation requires it, human will can even go against its own instincts and drives. Decisions such as whether one is prepared to harm another person for whatever reason, whether one is prepared to kill one or even many people, or whether one is able to forego one’s own advantage in favour of another living being are just a few examples of decisions of the will.

According to Leibniz, this world is not the best of all possible worlds because it is perfect, i.e. perfect and flawless in every respect. Rather, it is because it has endowed humans with free will as the only species in this world. A perfect world and the free will of its inhabitants to choose one behaviour or another are mutually exclusive. The question of how free human will really is has also been debated down the ages.

 

Let’s just imagine the opposite: a truly perfect world. People have been dreaming of a perfect world, a paradise on earth, not just since Thomas More published his philosophical treatise entitled “Utopia” in 1516. Just how intelligent Leibniz’s view of the world and mankind was can be seen from the attempts to realise such utopias. Both in the form of small, sectarian communities and in the form of large social attempts at realisation, all ended with the greatest possible lack of freedom for the individual. The fact that these systems are repeatedly abandoned by individuals or overcome by the social collective is a very strong testimony to the strength and power of free will.

For Leibniz, there is no perfect, ideal or even paradisiacal original state of this world and there never was. Quite unlike the belief that human sin was the reason for the expulsion from such a former paradise – as a kind of punishment – and that every human being since then has been born with an “original sin”. I clearly prefer the idea of a universe that accepts human error and even catastrophes and crimes in favour of freedom. In any case, neither the one nor the other can be proven.

Freedom creates space for the possible, for crossing boundaries – in thought and in action, in both positive and negative ways. But freedom also always means responsibility. Everyone decides every day how they use their freedom to make this world a better place or not, and bears the responsibility for doing so. Be it on a small or large scale.

In the “best of all possible worlds”, freedom is a prerequisite. This was probably one of the reasons why an irrepressible free spirit like OUBEY dedicated a painting to Leibniz’s idea. And perhaps this spirit of freedom lives on so strongly in this painting that to this day it immediately casts a spell over almost everyone who sees it.

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