Sigrid Weigel: Imaging the A-Visible. Towards a Grammatological Theory of Images
Lecture at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris
Sigrid Weigel’s lecture explains her contribution to the recent debate on Bildwissenschaft. Departing from Derrida’s precept “The trace must be thought before the existing” her focus is on the threshold between traces and iconic images, between something immaterial and its pictorial re/presentation,—in this way referring to Walter Benjamin’s threshold knowledge (Schwellenkunde).
Instead of asking for the history, the power, or essence of images, her grammatological theory addresses the question of imaging (Bildgebung) as such and the afterlife of the vera-icon-problem in the present quest for true images. It investigates the way in which something a-visible gets transformed into an image, the moment of making-an-appearance, and the simultaneous process of concealment. In this light, unexpected correspondences appear between premodern and contemporary image-practices, between the history of religion and modern sciences.
Sigrid Weigel is the former director of the ZfL and Professor emerita at the Technical University of Berlin.