Contact Info

Vince’s LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/vince-kadlubek

Email: vince@meowwolf.com

Website: https://meowwolf.com 

Twitter: @VKadlubek 

Vince Kadlubek Bio:

Vince Kadlubek is a Founder of Meow Wolf, an art collective that has transformed into an award winning Art and Entertainment Production Company that specializes in immersive, open-world walk through experiences. Vince acted as leader and CEO for Meow Wolf though its formidable years, having created the business plan for Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return and leading the team towards the project's completion in March of 2016. In January of 2017 Kadlubek formed Meow Wolf, Inc as a full fledged arts production company and creative studio positioned to create the largest, most innovative and audacious monumental art exhibits in the world. After raising series A funding he announced two new Meow Wolf exhibits in Las Vegas and Denver, opening in 2021. Kadlubek has been a force of vision in the realm of experiential art, and in 2020 launched a creative consulting agency called Spatial Activations as a platform to usher in a new era of experiential art in modern developments and everyday life. Vince is most passionate about co-creating fully-realized alternative realities that bring paradigm-shifting transformation and inspiration to the world.

Show Intro:

I have been fascinated with immersive experiences for years. Since studying architecture and sitting in on History Theory classes taught by Alberto Perez Gomez at Mc Gill University in the 80’s, I have deeply believed that there is a profound experiential difference between directly participating in ‘rituals’ rather than doing so at arm’s length, as a 3rd person observer.

I think we have lost the connection to significant rituals over the years. 

We don’t dance around the fire, stamping out patterns that bring into being place through the markings of our feet in the dust. 

The embodied enactment of rituals created context and meaning from our experiences. We came to better understand who we were in relationship to our community, culture, nation and cosmos through directly participating in the experience – the ritual enactment. Even now when we do go to church, synagogue or the mosque, to public events, musical productions, and movies, we observe more than we physically participate. 

When we do participate in an embodied way, time and space collapse. 

New constructs emerge. We create a crucible for experience, and we are changed, certainly for the duration of the ritual, but perhaps long afterwards as well. 

We have become a culture of watchers – be it watchers of TV, social media feeds, sports, entertainment or standing behind a red velvet stanchion at the museum and being ushered along past the Mona Lisa. In many ways, art, and our experience of it, has become a thing to view, at a distance, not something to directly participate in, to make.

In making art we express our collective need for self-validation. Art is an expression of who we are, at a very profound level.

It provides a sense of agency and empowerment of bringing things into being that have not been there before. 

We are Homo Faber – Man the Maker as well as we are Homo Sapiens – Man the Wise. We are not unique among the creatures of the planet in that we make things, but we are unique in that the things we make, make other things. And, the things we make are often done for the purpose of conveying concepts, ideologies and emotion – to make others feel something.

Another idea that we dig into in this episode about is it ‘the unknown’ and how we deal with the ambiguity and uncertainty of what has not yet come to pass. 

Within the context of the recent global pandemic this issue has been particularly acute in my mind as pathways and strategies for moving into my future, that believed were thoughtfully crafted and reliable, became immaterial and largely uncertain. 

What I thought was going to be course, changed and I found myself, over this past 20 months, looking into the idea of change, how we adapt to it, how it's transforming the world around us, our ability to remain resilient in the face of it and how we navigate this space of the unknown and consider it less foreboding and more an opportunity for creative possibility.

For many being in a constant state of change can be incredibly unnerving. We don't like it. 

It makes us feel uncomfortable and often, we would rather it not happen, but here's the thing, change doesn't much care if you're uncomfortable. It keeps moving on, along an exponential path that is rocketing skyward.

The unfamiliar signals potential danger and our biology is geared to sounding the alarms when the unfamiliar lurks near the edge of uncertainty. The paradox is that we both seek to avoid the perceived danger of the unknown while being driven toward the novel and unexpected because that is where learning lives. And so we slip into nostalgia remembering the good old times because it delivers a cozy sense of familiarity. On the other hand, change and the unknown is at the root of our shared neurobiology - our brains are made for change. We are incredibly adept at picking up even the slightest changes in our environment relationships and experiences because it has been built into us as a survival mechanism. To quickly attend to that which is the unknown to determine friend or foe. Whether we would be lunch or have lunch.

Enter Vince Kadlubek and Meow Wolf.

Vince is undeterred by the unknown. In fact, he finds stepping into the unknown unnecessary component for understanding himself, his context and how art can be transformative. 

Vince Kadlubek is a Founder of Meow Wolf, an art collective that has transformed into an award-winning Art and Entertainment Production Company that specializes in immersive, open-world walk through experiences. 

Vince acted as leader and CEO for Meow Wolf though its formidable years, having created the business plan for Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return and leading the team towards the project's completion in March of 2016. 

In January of 2017 Kadlubek formed Meow Wolf, Inc as a full-fledged arts production company and creative studio positioned to create the largest, most innovative and audacious monumental art exhibits in the world. 

After raising series A funding he announced two new Meow Wolf exhibits in Las Vegas and Denver, opening in 2021. 

Kadlubek has been a force of vision in the realm of experiential art, and in 2020 launched a creative consulting agency called Spatial Activations as a platform to usher in a new era of experiential art in modern developments and everyday life. 

Vince is most passionate about co-creating fully-realized alternative realities that bring paradigm-shifting transformation and inspiration to the world.

Meow Wolf’s mission?

…TO INSPIRE CREATIVITY THROUGH ART, EXPLORATION, AND PLAY SO THAT IMAGINATION WILL TRANSFORM THE WORLD…

Vince Kadlubek likes the unknown and he sees Meow Wolf as a place of exploration where people can for an hour or two lose themselves and enter the world of creative imagination to perhaps find something that they've always been looking for.

And with that, I welcome Vince Kadlubek, Founder and Director to the show…

ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:

LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b

Websites: 

https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)

vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)

Email: david.kepron@NXTLVLexperiencedesign.com

Twitter: DavidKepron

Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/

NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/

Bio:

David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe. 

David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels. 

In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies. 

As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace. 

David currently brings his creativity and insight on brand experiences to an international audience as a member of VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, as a Board Member of the Interactive Customer Experience Association (ICXA) and Sign Research Foundation’s (SRF) Program Committee.

He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.  

In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com. 

The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production is by Kano Sound. 

The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.

Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.