The history of imagery is often inseparable from the history of its presence. Within art history, architectural theory and visual culture, the absence of an image is determined as a secondary condition, defined by relation to what was once present. Yet, this understanding overlooks the ways in which absence stands on its own, as a productive semiotic strategy, as a sign, that generates its own meaning(s). Through refusal or concealment, absence can be much more than a trace of what once was, but a signifying force that asks of us not to view it simply as a non-representational practice, but as a powerful signifier of truths and untruths. This thesis proposes an approach towards absence not as a deficiency, but as a semiotic strategy. It attempts to examine absence within medieval heretical, theological and iconoclastic contexts and speculative architectural sites. However, rather than treating iconoclasm and heresy as marginal or destructive phenomena, the project approaches them as sites, in which the limits to representation are contested. This research is situated at the intersection of apophatic theology, semiotic theory and speculative architectural thought through an analysis of absence as a meaningful and structured condition, rather than a lack of signification.
The main goal of this thesis is to examine the instability of mediation and the limits of representation within two distinct, yet structurally related phenomena: Christian Medieval Theological thought and the crisis of Radioactive Waste Danger and Nuclear Semiotics. The first chapter of this thesis tackles the question of the deceitful Gnostic sign, the risk of idolatry in Iconoclasm, the collapse of language and knowledge transmission and the rejection of the “corrupt” sign. It puts into perspective the theological tradition of fundamental, metaphysical denial of representation, in its many forms. The iconoclast controversy showcases the distortion of the perceived image. In conversation with iconoclasm in Byzantium lies the inherent possibility of representation as failure. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite responds to this failure by pushing the sign to its limit, where even language consumes itself in pursuit of divine darkness, the divine unknowing. Augustine of Hippo internalises the crisis of the sign and locates this semiotic failure as a radical inaccessibility to the concept of God. He invites the gap between the human drive to know God and the unreachable God, Himself, with his privatio boni. The Bogomil movement brought this chapter in a culminating point, bringing the broken sign-world into conversation with an aspiration for truth and pure spirituality, beyond the material conditioning.
The second chapter, making a significant temporal jump, situates the instability of representation within the same theological crisis, but transported into a secular context. Here, the unrepresentable has a true sense of urgency, it no longer seeks for theological reasoning and answers. With Nuclear Semiotics, The Human Interference Task Force, Thomas Sebeok’s Atomic Priesthood and Atomic Tourism as key elements of the chapter, the attempt to stabilise mediation and discover reliable warning markers becomes a central case study. Unlike in the first chapter, representation is not in dialogue with the ineffable, but with the exigency of meaning transmission.
The thesis concludes with the crisis of representation, viewed not as failure, but as a permanent human condition. The constant attempt for communication and need to reach towards what exceeds representation is concluded as a positive, collective effort.