Dark Forest
Duo show by Estefanía B. Flores, Francesco Pacelli
Dark Forest
Duo show by Estefanía B. Flores, Francesco Pacelli
7 November - 27 December 2024
We welcome you to Dark Forest, a duo exhibition showcasing for the first time in Madrid new works by Estefanía B. Flores (Santa Cruz de Tenerife) and Francesco Pacelli (Milan). This show marks the first collaboration between curators Amina Berdin and Jorge Van den Eynde. The exhibition embodies the concept of the Dark Forest to engage with two seemingly opposing forces: magic and technology.
The Dark Forest is a recent expression introduced by sci-fi writer Liu Cixin in the book trilogy The Three-Body Problem. In this prophetic body of work, Cixin crafts a metaphor suggesting that Earth, naively viewing itself as a center of light and life, searches for connections within a seemingly silent, cold universe. This universe, like a forest at night, teems with creatures that remain hidden, silently blending into darkness to avoid potential predators.
Today, in the current digital discourse, the Dark Forest refers to all those informal and untracked digital practices that create private yet inclusive spaces of shared knowledge as a form of resistance towards bots, algorithms and all forms of tracking. Concealment is integral to this concept and closely parallels the way magic has often manifested: in darkness, away from the mainstream, sharing knowledge cautiously with only a select few members.No need to say that historically “the occult” was often employed as a synonym for magic, and secrecy provided ideal conditions for enchantments, alchemical experiments, and invocations. Our history has always unfolded without acknowledging the practitioners dwelling in the shadows. As the silent creatures that move quietly and undisturbed in the forest, these virtual and magical practices operate covertly, to protect the niche communities inhabiting these rarefied spaces.
The exhibition space itself is envisioned as a Dark Forest, where the works of Estefanía B. Flores and Francesco Pacelli delve into the mysteries and secrets of magic and technologies. A little corner or cavity in the depths of the forest that might evoke spaces of digital conviviality and the linguistic, visual and material ways through which magic operates and transforms reality and our perception of the world.
Estefanía B. Flores challenges the structures of representation in social media (algorithms) and in entertainment culture (video games), exploring the linguistic apparatus that make them tangible and possible. Blending ancient and contemporary imaginaries, the artist has created an environment that holds space to magic, enclosing it within industrial and organic materials. In Estefanía’s worlds, remnants of strange creatures and goddesses live in harmony with the very architectures that frame their habitat.
On the other hand, Francesco Pacelli departs from organic matter and the realm of the undetermined, often playing with processes reminiscent of the alchemic world. His works can be understood as the result of a thoughtful reflection on the properties and the intelligences of materials that the artist mixes and merges to transform their materiality and thus appearance. In this occasion, the artist has engaged with the expressive and conceptual tensions of image making: visibility and invisibility, individuality and the double, light and darkness.
Ultimately, Dark Forest explores the realm of the ineffable or symbolic, often tied to magical thinking, and offers alternative imaginaries to the current technologically-driven reality. Technic and magic are explored as opposing systems of reality in Federico Campagna’s eponymous book. While the first permeates and dominates the world as we know it today through a persistent categorisation and quantification of reality, the latter can be seen as a form of resistance. Magic indeed “works to challenge our perceptual and emotional bases for engaging the world [and] encourages us to think metaphorically”. Through the works of Estefanía B. Flores and Francesco Pacelli, the exhibition summons supernatural beings and portals to other dimensions, revealing the hidden processes and technologies of magic.
Supported by:
Dark Forest has been possible with the support from the Ayudas a la creación y la movilidad from Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Acción Cultural Española’s Programme for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture, and Culture Moves Europe, funded by the European Union and implemented by Goethe Institut.
-
1. Federico Campagna, Magic and Technic: The Reconstruction of Reality, Bloomsbury, 2018.
2. Jamie Sutcliffe (ed.), Magic, The MIT Press, 2021.
The Dark Forest is a recent expression introduced by sci-fi writer Liu Cixin in the book trilogy The Three-Body Problem. In this prophetic body of work, Cixin crafts a metaphor suggesting that Earth, naively viewing itself as a center of light and life, searches for connections within a seemingly silent, cold universe. This universe, like a forest at night, teems with creatures that remain hidden, silently blending into darkness to avoid potential predators.
Today, in the current digital discourse, the Dark Forest refers to all those informal and untracked digital practices that create private yet inclusive spaces of shared knowledge as a form of resistance towards bots, algorithms and all forms of tracking. Concealment is integral to this concept and closely parallels the way magic has often manifested: in darkness, away from the mainstream, sharing knowledge cautiously with only a select few members.No need to say that historically “the occult” was often employed as a synonym for magic, and secrecy provided ideal conditions for enchantments, alchemical experiments, and invocations. Our history has always unfolded without acknowledging the practitioners dwelling in the shadows. As the silent creatures that move quietly and undisturbed in the forest, these virtual and magical practices operate covertly, to protect the niche communities inhabiting these rarefied spaces.
The exhibition space itself is envisioned as a Dark Forest, where the works of Estefanía B. Flores and Francesco Pacelli delve into the mysteries and secrets of magic and technologies. A little corner or cavity in the depths of the forest that might evoke spaces of digital conviviality and the linguistic, visual and material ways through which magic operates and transforms reality and our perception of the world.
Estefanía B. Flores challenges the structures of representation in social media (algorithms) and in entertainment culture (video games), exploring the linguistic apparatus that make them tangible and possible. Blending ancient and contemporary imaginaries, the artist has created an environment that holds space to magic, enclosing it within industrial and organic materials. In Estefanía’s worlds, remnants of strange creatures and goddesses live in harmony with the very architectures that frame their habitat.
On the other hand, Francesco Pacelli departs from organic matter and the realm of the undetermined, often playing with processes reminiscent of the alchemic world. His works can be understood as the result of a thoughtful reflection on the properties and the intelligences of materials that the artist mixes and merges to transform their materiality and thus appearance. In this occasion, the artist has engaged with the expressive and conceptual tensions of image making: visibility and invisibility, individuality and the double, light and darkness.
Ultimately, Dark Forest explores the realm of the ineffable or symbolic, often tied to magical thinking, and offers alternative imaginaries to the current technologically-driven reality. Technic and magic are explored as opposing systems of reality in Federico Campagna’s eponymous book. While the first permeates and dominates the world as we know it today through a persistent categorisation and quantification of reality, the latter can be seen as a form of resistance. Magic indeed “works to challenge our perceptual and emotional bases for engaging the world [and] encourages us to think metaphorically”. Through the works of Estefanía B. Flores and Francesco Pacelli, the exhibition summons supernatural beings and portals to other dimensions, revealing the hidden processes and technologies of magic.
Supported by:
Dark Forest has been possible with the support from the Ayudas a la creación y la movilidad from Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Acción Cultural Española’s Programme for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture, and Culture Moves Europe, funded by the European Union and implemented by Goethe Institut.
-
1. Federico Campagna, Magic and Technic: The Reconstruction of Reality, Bloomsbury, 2018.
2. Jamie Sutcliffe (ed.), Magic, The MIT Press, 2021.