Nuclear Baroque: Glow and Violence in the Visual Aftermath of Chernobyl

The nuclear glow has never been more accessible. No longer confined to laboratories or instruments, it now radiates across television screens, video games, and social media. For those uninterested in equations or decay chains, the glow offers a seductive shorthand; a luminous fantasy through which the nuclear becomes legible, even alluring. Fannie Baden critically examines how the glow saturates today’s visual culture amid the so-called Nuclear Renaissance, a time defined by revived optimism for nuclear power. Yet this revival coincides with a rise in nuclear disaster imagery. Disasters once too vast to comprehend have been reimagined as something we can watch, replay, and aestheticize. Tracing this shift, what can be witnessed is not just a return to nuclear optimism, but an emergence of the Nuclear Baroque.