Machines à Penser

de Shumon Basar, Alec Finlay, Mark Riley

Fondazione Prada presents the exhibition "Machines à penser" ... exploring the correlation between conditions of exile, escape, and retreat, and physical or mental places which favor reflection, thought, and intellectual production. [The exhibition] focuses on three major philosophers of the 20th century: Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Curiously, all three had huts built for them or named after them: Wittgenstein's hut, Heidegger's hut, Adorno's hut. Together they form a powerful summary of modern philosophy's enduring infatuation with fantasies of escape and the architecture of retreat. Exiles or refugees, they are, in fact, machines à penser.