The Dark ForestExhibition Opening January 2027WORKS THAT ARE OF THIS EARTH NEED NOT APPLY
While our 2026 members show HECKLERS! showcased a spectrum of anxiety, for 2027, we invite you to contribute to a spectrum of utopias. One of contentedness. Of hope. Bear with me as we enter the dark forest. I promise it's not all gloomy inside... In 2008, Chinese writer and engineer Cixin Liu gave name to a theory that proposes a potential solution to the fermi paradox, a longstanding contradiction between the high probability of intelligent life from beyond our planet and the total lack of evidence for it. Liu imagined the universe as a dark forest. Like a jungle at night, he enviskons it is full of predators high and low. Mighty jaws, venom, quick wit and faster reflexes. They share knowledge that if they make a sound, something bigger, stronger and faster will be alerted to their presence. Anyone that didn't figure this out, well... |
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Dark, existential stuff. Only supported further by our own history. Our present. Our seemingly inevitable future.
But it also paints a quite beautiful, wondrous flipside. Within the vastness of the cosmos, hiding in the dark, could also lie infinite beauty. Beauty that doesn't scream for attention. Civilisations that have diverted from a destructive or dominating path.
Peaceful places that don't want to be found. The non-vocal, galactic majority, who demonstrate the difference between the strange and the sinister.
I invite you to conjure visions of those that have learned to stay quiet. People, places, ideas and wonders that hide amongst infinity. It could be a poem of peace from the laureat of another planet. An alien landscape full of flora and fauna beyond carbon life. Auroras, supernovas, little green men. Just about everything you can possibly imagine can be a potential inhabitant of the dark forest.
Perhaps we can join them one day. But we certainly aren't there yet.
Therefore, each work must reach beyond our beautiful, blue, goldilocks home.
Dream into the darkness, express what you find. Even if you can't totally explain it.
Interested in participating? CONTACT Curator Josh Willdigg
But it also paints a quite beautiful, wondrous flipside. Within the vastness of the cosmos, hiding in the dark, could also lie infinite beauty. Beauty that doesn't scream for attention. Civilisations that have diverted from a destructive or dominating path.
Peaceful places that don't want to be found. The non-vocal, galactic majority, who demonstrate the difference between the strange and the sinister.
I invite you to conjure visions of those that have learned to stay quiet. People, places, ideas and wonders that hide amongst infinity. It could be a poem of peace from the laureat of another planet. An alien landscape full of flora and fauna beyond carbon life. Auroras, supernovas, little green men. Just about everything you can possibly imagine can be a potential inhabitant of the dark forest.
Perhaps we can join them one day. But we certainly aren't there yet.
Therefore, each work must reach beyond our beautiful, blue, goldilocks home.
Dream into the darkness, express what you find. Even if you can't totally explain it.
Interested in participating? CONTACT Curator Josh Willdigg
How to apply
...for an exhibition about unseen worlds, quiet survival, cosmic ecology, outer intelligence, hidden civilizations, signals from space, non-human life forms, make the invisible visible, and all you can imagine that is not of this earth.
STEP #2 |
Expect a return e-mail from the curator to open the discussion about your concept. Submission timeline and requirements will be provided after the concept has been discussed and deemed aligned with the exhibition vision. |
