Machines à Penser

At the heart of Machines à penser lies an artistic encounter with three titans of 20th-century philosophy, each of whom experienced a place of retreat or exile as decisive for their Ludwig Wittgenstein, who built himself a hermitage in Norway; Martin Heidegger, who regularly retreated to a custom-built hut in the Black Forest; and Theodor Adorno, who was forced into exile in Los Angeles in the late 1930s. The titular "machines for thinking" are the modest dwellings with which these philosophers have become a nondescript bungalow, a mountain hut and a peasant’s cabin. Here, works by Alec Finlay, Susan Philipsz, Mark Riley, Anselm Kiefer, Alexander Kluge, Goshka Macuga, Mark Manders, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Gerhard Richter and others are placed in dialogue with documentation and models of Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Adorno's respective dwellings.