The Expanded Book: stratigraphy, materiality, locality

The Expanded Book: stratigraphy, materiality, locality (with special reference to Billingen, Borgundaberget, Brunnhemsberget, Dynkullen, Gerumsberget, Gisseberget, Halleberg, Hunneberg, Kinnekulle, Lugnåsberget, Myggeberget, Mösseberg, Plantaberget, Tovaberget, Varvsberget, and Ålleberg) is an ongoing artistic research project by Jonas (J) Magnusson and Cecilia Grönberg.

We approach the above mentioned sixteen sedimentary mountains, or ‘geological monuments’, appearing like islands in an otherwise rather flat landscape in rural parts of the Skaraborg region in Sweden, as material testing grounds for an Expanded Book and as generators of singular materials, forms and layered visual-verbal readings and visualizations.

How can the concepts of stratigraphy and the expanded book work to uncover, produce and display more material, local and multi-layered forms of knowledge and ways of reading/writing/visualizing? We aim to explore this question by creating a stratified book in order to ‘excavate’ different, though often also interrelated – photographical/visual, literary, historical/historiographical etc – ‘strata’ connected to these stratified table-top mountains. The Expanded Book project thus wants to achieve a book dispositive that will make it possible to display and reflect upon multi-level negotiations between place, site and different discourses, representations, histories and objects, as well as transdisciplinary knowledge transfers, by combining fieldwork and editing, by engaging with the materiality of local documents and actual locations while at the same time calling attention to the question of mediation and framing.