"Dark Forest"

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Mixed Media on Canvas

By Taylor Kirch

2022

 

“We can only hope the stars hear our pleas for a future beyond the hatred of their father’s rage upon the earth. Else we are doomed to float through the endless blue… if they find out humanity crumbles on an artifice of untruths and misery, oh dark forest! take me now.” - TK

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This piece serves as a haunting meditation on humanity’s self-inflicted collapse. The quote, written mirror-wise, reflects our own inability to look at the reality of the world plainly. It is all seen through a dark reflection of our worldview. Through layered abstraction, it seems to represent the world crumbling beneath the weight of its own artifice. The texture and tones suggest both vast cosmic isolation and the suffocating entanglements of societal collapse.

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I was always fascinated by Dante's Inferno and the concept of the "Dark Forest" which holds dual meaning. It is the dark night of the soul, the one that Virgil led Dante through to Elysium -- paradise -- and also a subconcept of Fermi's paradox. It was popularized in Ciu Cixin's The Dark Forest. It posits that advanced civilizations stay silent to avoid drawing attention to themselves, lest they be annihilated by other, potentially hostile civilizations.

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This is an ode - a plea - a cry to the heavens and the universe alike. If another being, another civilization saw us and our actions, would we be worth saving? I will always say yes to this question, but the question still haunts me.