ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ways in which absence can be turned into difficult knowledge, as well as its dangers and particularities when dealing with contemporary art. It considers how artworks can bring to the fore complexities involving archival politics that museums are unwilling to share and elaborate on their relationships to phenomenological, material and narrative absences. Materiality is a form of power that can operate as a form of difficult knowledge on its own. The violent rituals in which Arno Breker implicitly participated were the spiritual legacy attached to his work through his personality. Presence is a state which is often taken for granted in art museums. Harri Palviranta has continued to develop his project on the culture of violence that targets young men; in an augmented version of the installation displayed at the Tampere Art Museum he included images of school shooters from the US, Germany and Brazil.
