Madreporæ simplices, ett slags koraller, funnos i gruset vid stranden, ett par famnar högre än havet, uti stor myckenhet. Somlige av desse sågo ut såsom små käglor, somlige som små bägare.
Madreporæ aggregatæ, som utanpå voro med små stjärnor helt tätt stämplade och i själva brottet utviste ett hoplagt nät med lamellis parallells perpendicularibus och decussantibus, voro ej sällsynte vid dessa stränder.
The GLS is a platform for artistic portrayal of Gotland's natural history and culture, with special interest in lithological matters and studies of the petrificata.
WHO
The society was created in 2023 by the visual artist Tuula Närhinen. She was elected to work as the third invited artist-in-residency for the Art of Heritage initiative, a project realised by the Baltic Art Center (BAC) in collaboration with the Gotland Museum and the Uppsala University Graduate School in Sustainability Studies (GRASS).
WHY
The Art of Heritage project invites contemporary artists to visit Gotland in order to browse the museum collections, to explore the historic buildings and to discover how their personal artistic practices would resonate with the topical particularities of Gotland's natural history, archaeology and the local cultural traditions.
WHAT
The works presented on this website relate both to the geological history of Gotland as well as to the cultural traditions associated with the uses of limestone.
The general concept underlying the whole enterprise relies on cycles of sedimentation and erosion, meaning both the ongoing littoral processes - i.e. the forces of nature that constantly layer, expose and erode the sediments of the beach banks - and the operation of human cultural techniques in their futile attempt to preserve memories in limestone - only to end up with weathered church ruins, partly erased inscriptions or fragmentary fossil collections.
WHERE
The project will result in site-specific artistic interventions to the Gotland museum's collections. The cartographic mappings of the Reef Atlas will be put on display in the museum's staircases and in the entrance hall. In revisiting the Visby church ruins, the Whispers from the Past will feature performative enactments of rune writing. The online GLS website will disseminate the project by documenting the working process and by storing its outcomes.
WHEN
The presentation of the site-specific outcomes is planned to take place 19.10.2024–26.1.2025 in an exhibition at the Historical Museum (Strandgatan 14, Visby), accompanied by guided visits to the Visby church ruins. The onsite presentations will be followed by a peer-reviewed article reflecting on the body of artworks produced within this project. Drawing from the notion of autographic imprint or mould (c.f. Didi-Huberman's l'empreinte), the paper will consider various discursive and material practices where corals are framed to articulate and to embody the nature/culture distinction, starting from the seventeenth-century collected coral boxes to the phenomenon of coral bleaching triggered by climate change.
