Research projects

This project investigates Walter Benjamin’s engagement with the young Soviet Union as a 'force field' of contradictory political, technological, and aesthetic forces – prominently developed in his essay "Moscow" (1927).

The research project deals with the dynamic qualities of landscape in early modern art. The focus is on the question of the conditions of representation and their potential effectiveness.

The project examines the significance of the physical concept of "impetus", developed in the early 14th century, focusing on physical and physiological interdependencies.

The research project focuses on a contemporary analysis of energy and examines the relationship between landscape and energy. It focuses on the multi-layered concept of 'energy landscapes'.

The research project investigates the narration of catastrophes in the literature of Poetic Realism as a genuinely liminal phenomenon oscillating between nature and culture.

The project is dealing with the phenomenon of the cast shadow as vim naturae with regard to its function in medieval and early 15th century painting as well as in natural philosophy.

Focusing on aesthetic strategies and cultural transfers, the project investigates how nature was conceived as forces(s) in natural sciences and in art and literature from 1850 to 1900.

Focusing on modern literature and theory, the study explores the structural and functional nexus between force and indeterminacy.

In a history of knowledge of entomology, the use of the concept of force is examined in connection with related to the concept of Œconomy and ideas about reproduction in invertebrates is examined.

Between Herder and Goethe, (literary) aesthetic outlines using models of constancy and transformation of forces/energies indicate ideas that become formalised in thermodynamics around 1850.

A synergistic view of ecology, in particular from the viewpoint of evolution, helps to clarify changing conceptions regarding the effects of natural forces in the context of biodiversity.

The projects sets out from the concept of landscape as archival records in order to investigate its (forms of) appropriation using the concept of 'iconoscape'.

Image-critical and use-ethical ideas for the possible effects of and options for dealing with images of technical violence in the hybrid of mass media, social networks and contemporary art.

What force is immanent in nature? The project explores the historical semantics and the aesthetic staging of 'natural forces’ in literary and (popular) scientific texts from the early modern period to the present.