Aesthetics of Measurement

The research project »Towards (Im)measurability of Art and Life« by Miya Yoshida (Art & Civic Media, Innovation Incubator, Lüneburg) addresses the ambivalence of measurement and measurability in contemporary realities and questions the apparent tendency to increasingly classify more and more dimensions of our life and to translate them into numbers and predefined categories.

As part of the research project three events have been scheduled for December 2013 and January 2014 at Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg. For each event, one artist and one scientist are invited to give a presentation about their work which will lead into a discussion. The aim is to intersect two different approaches and ideas on measurement and measurability.

The third event with Patricia T. Clough and Matt Mullican is discussing the aesthetics of measurement. Considering the self both as subject and object of research, the event attempts to rethink the aesthetics of measurement by discussing the translation of personal experience into the space of objects. Thus, quantitative and qualitative methods and systems of measurement, which are applied widely in the sphere of research as well as of everyday life today, are questioned.

Patricia T. Clough is a professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies and Intercultural Studies at the Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is considered as one of those pioneering the »affectual turn« in social and cultural theory. Matt Mullican is an artist and a professor of sculpture at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (HFBK). He deals with questions of perception of reality, fiction and the imaginary and the possibilities of its representation.

The events are based on a cooperation of the research project »Art & Civic Media« of Innovation Incubator of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Heidelberger Kunstverein, and Institut français.

The Innovation Incubator is an EU major project, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and by the federal state of Lower Saxony.