The Dark Wood tells a story of entangled histories and cycles of collapse.  Pulling together seemingly disparate narrative threads, the book functions like a set of Russian nesting dolls, with each story unique yet refracted and enfolded within the overarching form of the others. Through intertwined images of abandoned Greco-Roman casts, an ancient Sequoia forest and the artist’s own texts, Mericle invites us to consider our conception of history and our place in the world as a fluid process rather than static truth.

The once highly-valued casts – which appear in the book as original and archival photographs – were rejected as worthless copies during the early part of the 20th century, under the belief that they lacked the artistry and aura of the originals, despite the fact that many of the “originals” were in fact Roman copies of Greek artifacts. During the two World Wars, many of these “originals” were damaged or destroyed, and the casts are now considered some of the most authoritative versions available.  

Concurrently, also at the turn of the 20th century, the field of dendrochronology was born out of the remains of ancient Sequoia trees felled during the westward rush of the late 1800’s. Dendrochronology correlates a relationship between tree-ring structure, sunspots, and Earth’s climate, and is an incredible tool for learning about the history of our planet. The tree rings allow us to chart the rise and fall of civilizations over the last 3000 years, including those that created the Greco-Roman artifacts. They also reveal the region’s complex ecological past, with shifting human perspectives on the role of fire in the health of the forest ecosystem. With the dissonant histories of expansive logging practices, the conservation movement, Indigenous knowledge, and climate change playing out against the troubled fate of the ancient Sequoias, we realize that, without fire, the Sequoia trees cannot regenerate.

Within the deadening story of Cartesian logic, we assume ourselves in control, somehow separate from nature. By positioning human history within a broader geological time frame, the tree-rings lend an adjusted perspective to the human enterprise, revealing that even our systems of knowledge, not to mention our governments and city-states, are subject to the inevitable cycles of the natural world. Fire, collapse, even chaos, as well as growth and thriving, are essential states through which everything must move. With an epilogue that grounds the complex sequence of images in personal elegy, The Dark Wood recalibrates our sense of identity by allowing us to locate a feeling of mourning, loss and the specifics of our own narratives within the broad and unfixed framework of history.

The Dark Wood was co-published by Perimeter Editions (Melbourne, Australia) and the Ice Plant (Los Angeles) in 2021.