Towards a Political Theology of Images. Imaging the A-Visible in Science, Religion, and Politics

The focus of the seminar was the observation that the ‘new images’ share many aspects with pre-modern and ancient image practices that present super-natural figures or a-visible, transcendental ideas: that is to say, images from religion or cult. In both cases, images are invented and produced in place of the lacking or impossible evidence of what they seemingly depict. Both try to negotiate the problem of the vera icon, i.e. to generate a picture from material traces or remains of something that is absent or even non-existent. Today, the problem of the vera icon, the ‘true image’, appears in science labs and media: in pictures of phenomena inaccessible to the human eye and optical instruments.