Abstract

This article addresses both the conceptualisation and visualisation of annihilation landscapes of suffering and despair. Rethinking the history of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what it means for understanding the past and present of atrocity, the essay attends to key concerns with the logics of the abyss and the nihilism of technologically enabled destruction. These will be addressed through a number of films that will highlight our main concerns with the violence of disappearance, desolation and the (im)possibility of memory.