There Where You Are Not

Foster, Stephen (2005) There Where You Are Not.

Abstract

There Where You Are Not is a collaborative project featuring new works by Guy Moreton, Alec Finlay, and Jeremy Millar. The exhibition explores the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his interest in the landscape (of language), and architecture within landscape. The remote places to which Wittgenstein was drawn include the northerly landscapes of Iceland and Norway; the alpine village of Trattenbach, where he worked as a school teacher; and the later refuges that he found in Connemara and County Wicklow in Ireland. These landscapes all share a quality of ‘quiet seriousness’ that reflects aspects of his philosophy and his own psychology. Wittgenstein’s retreat to Skjolden, Norway, lies at the heart of the collaboration between Alec Finlay and Guy Moreton. Presenting a descriptive essay in text and photography, they reflect upon the site of Wittgenstein’s house overlooking Lake Eidsvatnet and the surrounding landscape. Here he worked on the manuscripts of the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, and its relationship to a more general cultural model of a ‘house for thought’. The austerity and sense of isolation in Finlay’s collage poem and Moreton’s photographs can also be found in The Dark Night of the Intellect, a new film by Jeremy Millar. Based upon an essay written and, here, narrated by Tim Robinson, the film explores the landscape of Rosroe on Ireland’s western coast, described by Wittgenstein as ‘the last pool of darkness at the edge of Europe’. Another new work brings together footage from the artist’s home with a musical echo from Wittgenstein’s childhood. It attempts to establish both a sense of belonging and an understanding of how we might engage with the place of another. Wittgenstein was a radical literary theorist, writing philosophy as if it were poetry. There is a poetic intensity to the works on show that illustrates a form of expression more eloquent than language, echoing Wittgenstein’s own exploration of the visual depths of language. Yet while this exhibition possesses a quiet, haunting beauty, it is not without a sense of play, perhaps most clearly found within Finlay’s Language Games (Word Puzzles) and Wall Wordrawings - wanderings within Wittgenstein’s thought, and points from which our own thoughts might also wander

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