Dark Forest
Winter 2026
Collection Notes:
-Some muse may become ingested by evergreens, and the shadows that they cast. Winter 2026 Dark Forest comes out of a spiritual inspiration from the essay “The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet” by Bogna Konior, which, for her, was a natural expansion of the work Mark Fisher started in “Flatline Constructs”. Dark Forest Theory brings into question how communication through the internet not only compromises us, but leaves us vulnerable to thanatotic forces. “Communication is a compulsion, and yet it is also the source of conflict.” In our communication, we give ourselves over to our own entropy. The internet has become a dark forest, and when we call out upon it, we open ourselves up to our destruction. The first hunter who lifts the olifant to voice relinquishes concealment, his presence collapsing into exposed coordinates.
-Also considered is how the voice, once a continuous atmospheric vibration, is fractured by technological passage. Its analog waveforms are subjected to regimes of encoding, compression, and computational translation; what is beget out of the speaker, the emission, may render an inverted sacrality. The work of Throbbing Gristle and their own goals of reaching transcendence through the distortion of the vocal sound waves come to mind. Recursion of circuity encoding the voice in the endless knot.
-What also comes into play as our communication becomes more robust is how our proximity to George Bataille's concept of “Limit Experience” also creates an environment of anticipation for the apocalypse. Without the anticipation of romance in mass communication and instant gratification, our anticipation is instead turned solely to eschatology. Doomsday prepping, redoubting, the communes that light the wilderness, the bunkers, and MRE’s; America’s bride, which he waits for longingly at the door, is that of the promise of disaster, collapse, and entropy. When man cannot dream or anticipate Eros, he turns his gaze to the destruction of Babylon. Our greater aspirations for desire have become degenerate for a residual form of the anthroposphere.
If Battaile speaks of our own brutality, we must then go to find some semblance of elegance. To find a way for the object of elegance to become the subject. In mirk and mire, the ground which lies waste of the rich ceiling of evergreen, that which is gentle and forbearing must emerge from our own
As communication pulls us away and pulls us apart, as promises of false transfiguration into machines keep beckoning us with every call and murmur, we must keep enduring for the flesh to be truly redeemed as flesh.
Further Explorations:
The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Bogna Konior
The Tears of Eros by Georges Bataille
Redoubt by Matthew Barney
The Neganthropocene by Bernard Stiegler
Part Two: The Endless Not by Throbbing Gristle
Mnemonic: Ambient Mosaic by Mizmor
