Ergin
Çavuşoğlu and Jon Bird |
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Haus Wittgenstein - Bulgarisches Kulturinstitut, ViennaParkgasse 18, 1030 Wien, Austria
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In 1926, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
took over the design and building of a modernist townhouse for
his sister, Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein, on Kundmangasse,
Vienna. Margarethe originally commissioned the architect Paul
Engleman, a pupil of Adolf Loos but Wittgenstein gradually appropriated
the project whilst retaining Engleman’s overall structural framework.
It was the interior layout, dimensions, and fittings – windows,
doors, door handles, radiators – that became his focus for a
rigorously planned and executed set of internal spaces that
adhered to a Loosian rejection of all unnecessary and decorative
elements. Haus Wittgenstein was finally completed in 1929, ten
years after Wittgenstein had apparently abandoned philosophy
believing that his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had resolved
the logical structure of language, of what could and could not
be said. However, he had already begun to make notes towards
what would become his major rethink of linguistic philosophy,
the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953).
The Stonborough-Wittgenstein House thus occupies a transitional
and pivotal place in his thinking, a two-year period that initiated
the shift from a theory of language as representing the world
through the lens of logic (the ‘picture theory of meaning’)
to language as constructing a world of everyday practice (‘language
games’). Architecture, as a problem-solving material practice
of space, place, and subject, can be seen as analogous to the
reframing of subjectivity through language segueing from an
external or meta-critical position to one framed from within. Solo exhibitions include: Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Desire Lines/Tarot & Chess/, 'Artists' Film International on Language, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Istanbul Modern Museum and Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2020); Which Sun Gazed Down on Your Last Dream?, Rampa, Instanbul (2016); Cinefication (Tarot and Chess), Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp (1016); Liquid Breeding, YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku (2015); Dust Breeding, The Pavilion, Dubai (2011); Alterity, Rampa, Instanbul (2011), Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Zilkha Auditorium, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011); Crystal & Flame, PEER, London (2010), Ergin Çavuşoğlu. Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen (2009); Place after Place, Kunstverein Freiburg (2008), Point of Departure, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2006); Entanglement, Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), Dundee, 2004. Jon Bird is an independent curator, artist and writer on contemporary art and visual culture. Among the exhibitions, he has curated are Alfredo Jaar's exhibition at Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna (2019), a major exhibition on Nancy Spero and Kiki Smith for the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2003). Bird has been the curator of several major exhibitions of Leon Golub including, Leon Golub POWERPLAY: the Political Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2016), Leon Golub: Bite Your Tongue, Serpentine Gallery (2015), retrospective exhibitions for the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2011) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and tour (2000). Books include Alfredo Jaar: The Garden of Good and Evil (2019), Hans Hacke (eds) Jon Bird, Walter Grasskamp, Molly Nesbit (2003), Re-Writing Conceptual Art (eds) Jon Bird and Michael Newman (1999), Nancy Spero (ed), Jon Bird, Jo Anna Isaak, Sylvere Lotringer (1996) and Rachel Whiteread HOUSE (1995) among others. He contributes regularly to Le Monde Diplomatique. Jon Bird is an Emeritus Professor at the School of Arts & Creative Industries, Middlesex University, London. He lives and works in London. |