Gerald Wildgruber

Gerald Wildgruber is interested in what may be termed the sigetic tradition of thought (having its origins in silence) as well as the methods it developed to secure its expression. Literature, in this respect, is akin to certain philosophical as well as religious strategies in their common care of confronting, provoking and/or shunning processes of signification that tend to arise with the force of nature. An inquiry into the formal means devised in literature (figure, rhythm, meter) but also in religious act (in the sense of liturgical "actio") sheds light upon apparently remote fields such as the advent of purely formal methods in the sciences (axiomatics, logic, syntax -- especially at their moment of inception), and vice versa. -- After studies in Comparative Literature and Philosophy in Munich (with H.Birus, G.Neumann, B.Lypp and R.Warning) and Paris (with G.Genette and J.P.Morel) he worked with G.Boehm in the "Bild-Figur-Zahl" research group (with responsability for the domain of "Zahl"), and then became assistant to F.Kittler at the Seminar für Ästhetik of Humboldt University in Berlin. His present research at eikones in Basel tries to elucidate the emergence of image-related ideas in early Greek thought, namely through an investigation into concepts that refer equally to language and vision.