And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

There is a constant rushing, rattling, roaring, humming, bursting, crashing, buzzing, pounding, knocking, and droning — every day we move through a dense thicket of sound that has become so familiar it hardly registers in our perception, unless the volume suddenly spikes for a brief moment. This background noise is so ingrained in our lives, so strangely comforting, that for many people, being exposed to complete silence feels so unfamiliar and unsettling that they risk losing their grip on reality. An abyss opens up for those who enter silence — and they realize: this is not nothing.

The manifold forms and effects of silence — ranging from states of extreme discomfort and tormenting uncertainty to feelings of ecstasy and oceanic boundlessness — have moved and fascinated humanity for millennia. Whether in the mystical search for unity with the divine or the desire for release from the self, silence is not only a unifying element across countless cultural practices, but an anthropological constant in its own right. It comes as no surprise, then, that silence has entered modern art and culture as a motif and formative element. But silence is more than that: it arises when we touch the limits of experience, when words suddenly fail us, and the magnitude or gravity of an experience takes our breath away. Silence can be that infinitesimal moment in which the seemingly inevitable course of events is interrupted — and everything might just be entirely different. In moments of silence, it can feel as though space itself is stretched to the brink — only to burst open a second later with the force of a storm. Silence can be withdrawal from the world, inner contemplation, and complete stillness — but it can also be the exact opposite: a silent scream, a protest against the catastrophe of things going on as they always have.

Inspired by the manifold metamorphoses of silence in art, culture, and everyday life the four artists Vanshika Agrawal, Neda Aydin, Pavlos Ioannides, and Lorenz Pasch each explore the phenomenon of silence in their own unique and remarkable way.

Abyss of absence documents an ongoing search through the depths of the eerie and captivating void that silence reveals.