Roman Ondak's performance Measuring the Universe (2007) was part of Tate Modern's 25th birthday weekend celebrations from May 9 to 12. The mass-participation artwork invited the public to choose a location in the Turbine Hall to have their height measured and marked with their name and the date. Over the weekend, the walls were gradually filled with individual markings, creating a collective drawing and an ephemeral performance.

Measuring the Universe expresses Ondak’s interest in merging art and everyday life and reflects on our experience of the passing of time. In the performance, a private individual action is transformed into a public and collective one within the museum.

In participating, visitors to the installation perform both the act of being measured and the act of positioning themselves within the ‘universe’ that Ondak seeks to capture. The work goes beyond the actual measurements as quantifiable data to explore what it means to try and measure the universe through the people who compose it.

As the work is based on a set of instructions rather than the creation of an object—after all, “measuring the universe” is a continuous act—it can be seen as an extended performance, inhabiting different public spaces and capturing the measurements of groups of people across the world. While individual museums may document their iteration of the work, capturing the specific measurements of their audiences at a given moment, the collective work continues to grow as the documentation of the performance accumulates.

Measuring the Universe was previously presented at Parramatta Town Hall, Sydney, in 2014 as part of the Sydney Festival; at Tate St Ives in 2011; at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2010–11; at MoMA in New York in 2009; at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in 2007, and at many other venues.

+ about roman ondak

+ about the performance