A pioneering study in which professor of media theory Dieter Mersch paves the way for a methodology of aesthetics that would move beyond the “linguistic turn” to create a new scientific discourse that would create a better conceptual understanding of art-based research.
The idea of “art as research” and “research as art” have risen over the past two decades as important critical focuses for the philosophy of media, aesthetics, and art. Of particular interest is how the methodologies of art and science might be merged to create a better conceptual understanding of art-based research.
In Epistemologies of Aesthetics, Dieter Mersch deconstructs and displaces the terminology that typically accompanies the question of the relationship between art and scientific truth. Identifying artistic practices as modes of thought that do not make use of language in a way that can easily be translated into scientific discourse, Mersch advocates for an aesthetic mode of thought beyond the “linguistic turn,” a way of thinking that cannot be substituted by any other disciplinary system.
Dieter Mersch studied mathematics and philosophy in Cologne, Bochum, and Darmstadt. In 2004 he became Professor of
Media Theory and Media Studies at the University of Potsdam. Since 2013 he has been Head of the Institute for Theory at the ZHdK Zurich. Dieter Mersch was guest professor in Chicago, Budapest and Lucerne, and Fellow at the IKKM Weimar and at the ZHdK Zurich. His work focuses on media philosophy, aesthetics and art theory, semiotics, hermeneutics, poststructuralism and philosophy of the image and language.
