This essay discusses how coral is becoming a kind of charismatic megafauna and a cultural icon for extinction in the Anthropocene. Until recently, most of the cultural associations around coral emphasized the strangeness and exotic qualities of coral that combines animal, mineral, and vegetable bodies. Darwin studied coral as a robust maker of atolls, while Melville wrote about coral stringing the Pacific Islands as ‘marine gardens.’ More recent theorizing on coral from Eva Hayward and Stefan Helmreich has been keen to emphasize how coral is transbiological and queer in the multi-species kinships it enables. However, in recent decades, as evidence of bleaching and mass coral die-offs have been registered by marine scientists, coral is also fast becoming a barometer for the sixth mass extinction. I look at how contemporary cultural representations of coral are straining to reconfigure the life of coral as caught between associations of fragility and resilience, seeing coral as capable of supporting indigenous island civilizations while not being able to survive ocean warming of less than one degree Celsius. I examine the work of recent artists (Courtney Mattison and Alison McDonald) whose coral-themed work combines science and spectacle. These artists return to older visions of coral figured fantastically as both living and dead, yet updating this view for today, as we find coral to be a primary figure for life and death in the Anthropocene. I finish with a discussion of the recent documentary film Chasing Coral (2017) as negotiating multiple simultaneous visual tropes and coral conditions. This film aims to provide viewers with a sense of time constraints for scientists, filmmakers, and for coral reef colonies under extreme stress in areas including the Great Barrier Reef. The film tries to articulate a pathway between scientific documentation, environmental activism, and visual drama, ultimately composing these perspectives into a work that suggests that the imbalance and overlap of these ways of engaging with coral will provide a model for how to form a global coral culture movement.

中文翻译：

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人类世的珊瑚文化

本文讨论了珊瑚如何成为一种具有超凡魅力的大型动物，以及人类世间灭绝的文化标志。直到最近，围绕珊瑚的大多数文化协会都强调结合了动物，矿物质和蔬菜的珊瑚的奇异和奇特的品质。达尔文研究珊瑚是强健的环礁制造者，而梅尔维尔（Melville）则将珊瑚列为太平洋岛屿的“海洋花园”。伊娃·海沃德（Eva Hayward）和斯特凡·赫尔姆赖希（Stefan Helmreich）最近对珊瑚进行的理论研究一直在强调珊瑚如何在其实现的多物种亲缘关系中具有转生性和奇异性。但是，近几十年来，随着海洋科学家发现漂白和大量珊瑚死亡的证据，珊瑚也迅速成为第六次大规模灭绝的晴雨表。我研究了当代珊瑚的文化表现形式如何在脆弱性和弹性之间的联系中努力重新配置珊瑚的生活，将珊瑚视为能够支持本土岛屿文明，而不能承受低于摄氏1度的海洋变暖。我考察了最近的艺术家（Courtney Mattison和Alison McDonald）的作品，他们的珊瑚主题作品融合了科学和奇观。这些艺术家回到了珊瑚的古老异象，将其幻想成活着的和死去的，但在今天，这种观点得到了更新，因为我们发现珊瑚是人类世中生与死的主要人物。最后，我将讨论最近的纪录片《追逐珊瑚（Chasing Coral）》（2017），旨在同时探讨多种视觉对比和珊瑚状况。这部电影的目的是为观众，科学家，电影摄制者以及在大堡礁等地区处于极端压力下的珊瑚礁殖民地提供一种时间紧迫感。这部电影试图阐明科学文献，环境行动主义和视觉戏剧之间的途径，最终将这些观点组合成作品，表明这些与珊瑚互动的方式的不平衡和重叠将为如何形成全球珊瑚提供模型。文化运动。