Activities

Friday, 5th June, 2013, room 114 Sydnesplassen 12/13. Open for all!

Call for papers!

"Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language"

Guest researcher at WAB, Jakub Mácha, and previous guest Sebastian Greve, are arranging a workshop 14th June: "Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language". The deadline for submissions is Monday 20th May. Notifications of (non-)acceptance will be sent out no later than 1st June. Contributions should be sent via e-mail to either macha[at]mail.muni.cz or s.greve[at]bbk.ac.uk. There is no conference fee. The workshop is open to all.

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Thursday 25th April 2013, 10.15 a.m. - 12.15 p.m., room 130, Sydnesplassen 12/13. Open for all!

Christian Erbacher, "Wittgenstein's Heirs: R. Rhees, G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe as Students, Colleagues and Friends of Ludwig Wittgenstein"

Erbacher, post.doc. in the department, will share preliminary results from his NFR FRIPRO-supported research project "Shaping a Domain of Knowledge by Editorial Processing: The Case of Editing Wittgenstein's Work".

Abstract

"Scholars approach Wittgenstein's Nachlass from several angles such as philosophy, philology, text-encoding or digital humanities. Largely unexplored remains the fascinating human story in the editorial history of the Wittgenstein papers. The three philosophers Rush Rhees, Georg Henrik von Wright and Elizabeth Anscombe devoted a significant part of their lifetime to fulfil Wittgenstein's wish to publish from his writings what they thought fit. Their reasons and motives for deciding what and how to edit and the significance they attached to their editions show what philosophical inheritance may mean in a full sense of the word.

As a first chapter of such an intellectual biography of Wittgenstein's Nachlass, I want to sketch the relationships between Wittgenstein and his later literary executors, beginning with the time when they had been students of Wittgenstein until they became colleagues and friends. It is important to study these personal relationships since they put us in touch with the soil from which the editions grew: we may understand better why Wittgenstein bequeathed Rhees, Wright and Anscombe with the task of publishing his writings and we may understand better why they, as heirs, acted as they did in fulfilling their given duty.

The paper presents work in progress."

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Volt and The Wittgenstein Archives presents:
 
 Erick Beltrán & Bernardo Ortiz
 
 Game Piece
- Conference and Examples
 
Monday 8 April 2013 at 5 p.m.
Sydnesplassen 12/13, rom 210

 
Wittgenstein's theory of language games was constructed by an accumulation of examples: the construction foreman and his assistant, a tailor measuring a suit, a few hypothetical tribes that speak strange languages, the impossibility of a greenish red, et cetera. Suppose then that someone decides to use these examples as a tool. As a way of reading other things. “It is […] essential to our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new from it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we, in a sense, seem not to understand” (Philosophical Investigations, §89).
 
Suppose that two people are playing a game. They are playing a game and talking. They are playing a game and talking publicly. Someone might see this and think that they are at a conference. They take things out of a box and talk about images, about lines. They talk about toxoplasmosis in rats. Little stories read out loud that when read together may echo the world of a book that is made of examples. Perhaps they are using the examples from the book as a tool, as a sort of prosthetic device – the box works as such a device – that makes them change the tone, or the emphasis, and by doing so, someone understands something. The box will be left at the archive where it can be used to play the piece, with variations.
 
For the last three years, Erick Beltran and Bernardo Ortiz have constantly talked about the things that led, without them knowing it, to this proposal. While they were talking, two projects would come into being. The first one was the Editorial Project for the 7th Mercosul Bienal (Porto Alegre, Brazil 2009) and the other was  The Congress for the 11th Lyon Biennale (Lyon, France 2011). Both projects dealt with images in different ways, with their reproduction and dissemination.
 
Erick Beltrán (Mexico City, 1974) analyzes and reflects on discourse constructions and nonlinear knowledge formats. He works with various formats such as the book, installations and lecture-performances. Through these mediums he experiments with the link between public art and the various graphic languages. The archive, the museum and the library are tools and natural parts of this investigation process. His recent work has been exhibited at Parque Cultural Valparaiso (Chile), MACBA (Barcelona), Qalandia International (Palestine), Taipei Biennial 2012 (Taipei), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco), The Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), Manifesta 8 (Murcia), among others.
 
Bernardo Ortiz (Bogotá, 1972) makes drawings and writes. His current work revolves around the idea of the page “as a space where language and image are in constant conflict” (sic). Thus his work deals with notions of opaqueness, transparency, ineffableness, bluntness, sometimes rendered in a literal way, sometimes in a metaphorical way, and through means that are almost always anachronistic. He has a BFA degree from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and an MA in Philosophy from the Universidad del Valle in Cali. Recent exhibitions include the São Paulo Bienal 2012  and the Lyon Biennale 2011.
 
The project is a collaboration with Volt and The Wittgenstein Archives and is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.
 
http://wab.uib.no/
http://www.gallerivolt.no