AMETRIA
is the privilege of disproportion, of excess, the rejection of an
overall vision, the error that turns out to be right. Out of the
meeting of the Benaki Museum and the DESTE Foundation, works and
objects become proofs of an impulse that, as a precise and
determinate entity, takes part in the evolution of thought.
Totally
uninterested in the values of community life, which promotes the
virtues of measure and the happy mean, dismeasure is the expression
of an original purposeless drive, which chooses neither to have nor
not to have and whose sole intention is to be exercised without
reserve. The degree of dismeasure is dependent on just how radical is
the drive that expresses it.
When
a drive that dominates the field of consciousness finds a particular
form, it becomes instigation, stirring opposition or prompting
imitation. If the imitation overcomes by impulse the inclination to
restraint, an epidemic phenomenon occurs that forces the community to
change its way of thinking and behavior and its common action. An
order of dismeasure can be extended to the point of becoming a
conventional value, triggering a series of effects from the social
environment to the natural person.
Original
Drawing by C. A. Doxiadis prepared for his article “The Future of
Copenhagen: Considerations in the Abstract", 1963
AMETRIA is
organized by the DESTE Foundation in collaboration with the Benaki
Museum.
