An Exercise in Seeing, (2015) ESA Conference DIT, Dublin

 An Exercise in Seeing, was re-enacted for the ESA (European Society of Aesthetics) conference in Dublin 2015.

This work was enacted in the context of an academic conference as a lecture that engages with the showing /saying distinction that Ludwig Wittgenstein identifies articulates as Proposition 7 in the Tractatus. By capturing the limits of language, Proposition 7 attends to the mystical, by suggesting how unsayable philosophical propositions (metaphysical, ethical and aesthetic) make themselves manifest. In a paradoxical twist, An Exercise in Seeing provides an entry point to engage with Proposition 7 using language as a strategy to reveal what we cannot speak of.

An Exercise in Seeing took place in the courtyard on DIT Grangegorman. The computerized voice of Viki, transmitted from a large speaker under a Lime Tree beckoned those attending the conference to gather around “her” and participate in the exercise. A group of school children who happened to be passing through the campus also took part in this twenty minute exercise.

Special thanks to Justine Mc Donald, Amy Farrell and Kevin Lindsay

An Aid for Seeing