We meet in the entrance hall of the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai. We are a group of Chinese executives and consultants from SYNNECTA China. Our topic: Make my organization dance.
»After the red moon« by El Anatsui is a monumental work of art. To experience it, it needs the architecture of today’s museums – flexible in structure, open and wide inside and breaking down the boundary between outside and inside. It reflects the principles of contemporary organizational development: Transparency and collaboration, not just inwards. We look up and experience the carpet-like structures that can only be seen now in this space and this morning light – a momentary experience. Even if the work itself is constant, it changes depending on where and when it is seen. Our reflective journey through the exhibition begins with this first glance. Experience and reflection form the rhythm of our tour. Quotes from El Anatsui give us additional inspiration:
»I use multiple elements to talk about the world: not a world made up of just one culture, but a world shaped by all of us coming together.«
We linger for a long time on a sentence that we also experience when seeing one of the works:
»The process was subverting the stereotype of metal as a stiff, rigid medium and rather showing it as a soft, pliable, almost sensous material, capable of attaining immense dimensions and being adapted to specific spaces.«
We leave the exhibition after three hours. The effect: principles for an agile, flexible and yet focused organization were not only understood as theory, but also sensually experienced when looking at the works. The sensory reference point makes it much more likely that the integration into one’s own reality will go beyond words.
When was the last time you were confronted with contemporary art?
Rüdiger Müngersdorff