James Turell- feeling something, something come through light, come through space.

I have just been spending the afternoon reading the entire catalogue of James Turrell "Zug Zuoz"after recently having seen his skyspace in MoMA PS1 in New York. His reflections about light, seeing and being....outside-inside-outside light

"Even in the skyspace you are not looking even at the light; you are looking at what the light does to the sky. so this idea of the presence of light, making it physically felt to feel its power, you can't use it with image because then you're paying attention to the content or story. you can move through time with this light, as in music. ... Pianists can even sometimes go beyond what the composer was mapping out. and in mapping the territory, these people can very elegantly express that territory. So I see this quality of light without image as having the possibility of having a sort of inner pure emotion, or perhaps a stricter and more direct way to the idea of an expression of how to survive. you can begin to get toward that way of feeling something, and feeling something, something come through light, come through space... The big thing is that it's something we don't see a lot of, coming, moving through volume, just this color coming from behind, through the front, and then the color that's expressly part of it....I mean if you have something that has no image, and maybe there's no particular object, and nothing to focus on- so without image or object or focus what is there, you know?...It comes from nothing; and then, nothing is not nothing, emptiness in not emptiness...."

"I generally make a light that we don't normally see; I like that. Now we're looking at light. We're not looking at what light reveals about somethings else. Light is not illuminating another thing. We're looking at the light itself. "

"It's just like the skyspaces are a gentle reminder, or a mild koan - a koan being the Zen question that doesn't really have an answer about how we create the reality in which we live, because we color the sky but we are very unaware that we give the sky its color. and it is only becaus we give the sky its color, that I am able to change the color of the sky for you. ... We are not so much of how much this reality, this thing we receive is actually created by us....It is this idea of how much we ourselves make of this reality within which we exist."

That what people in leadership call the "inner place- a capacity that sets apart one person/leader from the other- that the same situation and actions can have two completely different outcomes, depending on that inner starting point." Otto Scharmer

Seize and enjoy this outside-inside-outside light!!

James Turrell 2009

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Turrell-Zuoz-048.jpg

Book www.hatjecantz.de/controller.php?cmd=detail&titzif=00002602&lang=en or AMAZON

David against Goliath: "wikileaks mirror" is another breakthrough phenomena of web 2.0 & leadership

  

Within few hours the wikileak contents were copied by many more sites than Wikileaks had called for. The initial 50 pages were reached quickly, reaching nearly 100 in the early evening. The sites included peoplerule.info, wikileaks.geekview.be, wikileaks.the-secret-world.info. The names of many of these sites "are program". 

What is happening? Disregarding the fact what you think about Wikileaks, there seems to be something deeper going on. 

It is David against Goliath. Nation states, multi-national companies, international organizations gearing up to mute Wikileaks. But this seems to produce the contrary effect. Even more sites are adopting the content and splitter it throughout the entire net. 

It is about leadership. No longer a clear one-way, organisation-focused and often hierarchical leadership can trump and curtail the network-oriented, multi-way, distributed leadership of the wiki and web-world. 

Whatever you think and agree or disagree with Wikileaks- this is no longer a phenomena about news and transparency. This is the start of a fundamental discussion about leadership in a web 2.0 world.

I am curious to check out how many sites will be listed when I wake up tomorrow.

http://213.251.145.96/mirrors.html

session #3: Don Tapscott talking about Macrowikinomics & leadership

Landscapes of leadership session #3: Don Tapscott talking about Macrowikinomics and his understanding about new leadership paradigm.

"Future is to be achieved not predicted"

Enjoy! Interview with Prof Edgar Schein - "Helping & Leadership"

Why do crucial and vital items of information only get to decision makers too late or not at all? How can you ensure "upward und lateral communication" in your own context? What is "helping", what are the three roles of helping? What is "humble inquiry" in a leadership role and what do you achieve with it?













Edgar H. Schein, Professor emeritus of the Sloan School of Management / MIT, is one of the co-founders of organizational psychology and organizational development. Following his ethnological and socio-psychological studies and PhD in organizational psychology at Harvard, Schein developed the practice of process consultation and coaching. He is the author of numerous publications on process facilitation, analysis and development of organizational culture as well as career anchors.  Together with Warren Bennis and Chris Argyris he was a trainer at the National Training Lab and led a leadership research program for the US Army. From 1956 until 2004  he was professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Spread your wings and fly

The young albatross always flap, wiggle and move their wings. They are exercising. Exercising for the one day when they are going near the end of the cliff. And then, then take a leap and spread the wings and fly.

One story i would like to share captures very well, i think, what i am referring to-- and at the same time is a parable for many other things we can do:


This week i was at this birthday party of a dear friend. A friend who means a lot to me, has inspired me and reminds me every day to " shine a light". Frances Hesselbein, long time CEO of the girl scouts for America.

I had volunteered to contribute to the evening with something personal- to sing German lieder, Schubert, Beethoven...you know. What I did not know at the time was that there would be rather 140 people than the 20 I had anticipated. What I also did not know was that General Shinseki was giving a birthday speech shortly before I did. And what I did not know was that there would be no piano or band who would accompany me as the set up of the room did not allow for this.

So here i was- the albatros at the cliff. 
And i felt that the only way to go, was the way to go ahead -- and spread my wings, trusting that they would carry me.
I sang- For frances and " for my life". beethoven and brahms.

In the first piece by Beethoven, I experienced some glitch. A very difficult musical cliff to manoeuvre. Reflecting what to do- as much as you can if you are singing- i decided to pull ahead. Maybe some people would notice, some others would not. And there was no music after all, so even that glitch seemed somehow ok.

The second song- was brahmas lullaby " guten abend gute Nacht". 
I felt that there was just the room and one option- to perform, in the literal sense. 
And all of the sudden there it was: the stream of air and aerodynamic. 






And I flew.

I flew and sang in a way, i dare say with all humbleness, that i have never heard me sing before, nor ever thought i was able to do. 

I barely remember anything else as i also felt my leg trembling, so nervous i was. But then suddenly i heard the People in the room softly humming along. A clear breeze and air stream. It made me smile.


And i flew and flew and flew.
It was an amazing feeling to see that i could do something i never thought I could.


So what is it that drives me to writ this?
I guess it is the strong feeling of encouragement and transformational experience I was so fortunate to experience. 

THAT is what it is all about: yes, exercise and practice. But then one day when it is time, and some may refer to it as the call, trust your abilities and spread your wings and fly.

Trust your abilities and discover what you are here to do......
And take a leap and spread your wings and fly!      

leadership*web2.0*art: contemporary art and leadership: all I want you to...

leadership*web2.0*art: contemporary art and leadership: all I want you to...: "It was a big experiment - teaching leadership through contemporary art. Students clapping at the end, I guess it worked. 'All I want you to..."

landscape of leadership: framework of leadershipnew paradigm of leadership in web 2.0art of leadership- art as leadership

contemporary art and leadership: all I want you to remember is "candy"

It was a big experiment - teaching leadership through contemporary art. Students clapping at the end, I guess it worked.

"All I want you to remember at the end of this class is: CANDY", I told them.
I believe neuroscience taught us a lot about how we retrieve cognitive knowledge. And just forget about all these frameworks and knowledge you are trying to sizzle into your brain! save your time, it will not stick. at least most of it. So here is the idea to create and take a "trigger"--one you have experienced and when you think of it bridges all the knowledge...and boom, when you are in a situation there it is back again when you need it!

Here it is the art piece- Felix Gonzalez Torres, Placebo:

Key was to connect the discussion around the painting with two axes
1) the vertical axes: looking at art and problems/issues on multiple levels: firstly, the superficial "technical level" where symptoms play out, people refer to something on the surface; second the aesthetical/emotional level and last but not least the political, "real"level- what is it really going on? in leadership frameworks it is also referred to "adaptive" level (Heifetz)
2) the horizontal axes: imagine you are sitting around a table or in an organization and you hear all those different factions speak: the "expert" faction, knowing a lot about the piece; the "student" faction, genuinely interested and asking questions; the "pretenders" faction - "very interesting", you know what I mean; and then there is the "saboteur" faction who tells you that anybody could put together a bunch of candy or in an organizational context try to take things off the table by saying "that we have been discussing this already so many times".

What makes it relevant and stick- that everybody is moved about such art piece- in one or the other way.
and that they therefore can retrieve this information when they just think about one thing next time:
"CANDY".

Next week- leadership and evolving web with Don Tapscott skyping in!

leadership*web2.0*art- vibes from Cambridge, MA.