Nuclear Baroque: Glow and Violence in the visual aftermath of Chornobyl

The Nuclear Renaissance is a term that describes today’s socio-political attitudes toward nuclear technology. The renewed optimism surrounding nuclear power frames it as a solution to climate change and environmental inequality. However, the popular visual culture that accompanies these attitudes rarely portrays nuclear power in a positive light, but rather as a form of destruction we are expected to coexist with.
The dissertation investigates how ’the glow’ functions as a visual trope/metaphor in representations of the Chornobyl disaster. It explores how glowing imagery moves between scientific fact and cultural imagination, shaping laypeople’s understanding of radiation, risk, and nuclear power. The study argues that while the glow illustrates contamination, it also aestheticises disaster by making it tangible and dismissible. Through aesthetic analyses of the TV series Chernobyl and the videogame Chernobylite, the dissertation examines representations of landscapes, bodies, and radiation. It shows how these visual forms can both aid in understanding and distort it, turning catastrophe into spectacle, and spectacle into catastrophe. By linking these representations to art historical ideals of the Baroque, the dissertation highlights how nuclear disaster is made meaningful through images that oscillate between danger and fascination.