Nolan Oswald Dennis: geo-logics

Nolan Oswald Dennis’ solo presentation geo-logics comprises of two major recent works, Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology and Isivivane/Superpositions, both 2022-23

Nolan is concerned with the hidden structures that condition our social and political imagination, which move across multiple realms (technical, spiritual, economic, psychological, etc) and works to produce alternative-diagrams and systems, which sometimes oppose and sometimes compliment each other. geo-logics engages with current discussions around remediating the contentious colonial heritage of technical and science museums – asking whether a non-imperial and healing approach to these types of museum collections unearth other dispositions, lines of possibility and potential histories. Nolan complicates these concerns by posing questions around the discipline of archaeology and its techno-political bonds with other histories of extraction as conventions of colonial practices.

Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology, 2022-23

In Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology Nolan enacts a reverse archaeology of the Mapungubwe collection housed at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Reverse archaeology refers to the artist’s critical counter-approach to the discipline of archaeology. Instead this work performs a series of alterations to the instruments, structures and technologies of archaeological practice in order to prepare them for more radical paths. Reverse archaeology is a refusal to treat the past as a resource to be extracted (from the earth). It is rather a tool to unearth the violences against memory and soil that produces knowledge as a rehearsal for a practice that will happen at another, unspecified, time.

The installation comprises of a speculative film, time-map lightboxes, a set of viewing rocks and seating responding to the botched excavations, gold artefacts, surveys, misinterpretations, metallurgic symbolism, mythologies, material and spiritual histories surrounding the sacred hill and ancient capital of the precolonial Mapungubwe state.

Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology was selected by the Commissioning Committee 2021/23 and acquired through the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund. It will subsequently be donated to the Dutch state, becoming an integral part of the national art collection (‘Rijkscollectie’), available for institutions in the Netherlands and abroad.

Isivivane/Superpositions, 2022/23

Isivivane/Superpositions, explores the political and spiritual history of the land in South Africa as a necessary framework for how we encounter, understand, and transform our planet. The work is an installation of geopoetic gestures that takes inspiration from the artist’s ongoing conversations with geologists and geology museum curators. For Nolan, dispossession, racialization and restitution are important parts of how we may think about the world on a geological scale: a planetary science also known as reparation. Working with digital and physical simulations of geological objects this work offers itself as a platform for collectively learning a way back to another world.

'Superposition' is the term used by geologists to describe a vertical conception of time. In geological terms depth is a measure of duration, going down is a movement through space and into time. A superposition is also the act of placing one thing on top of another. The accumulation of rocks and other material is therefore also an accumulation time (and other immaterial).

'Isivivane' is the isiZulu word meaning a cairn, a pile of stones marking a significant point in the landscape. It is also the word for making a contribution or working together.

Isivivane/Superpositions forms part of a commission made possible by INSITE through COMMONPLACE, a project taking place between Mexico, South Africa and Peru.

First Double 1 & 2

Nolan's exhibition is part of the series First Double 1 & 2, which takes its title from a collaborative album by South African musicians Madala Kunene, Baba Mokoena, and Sibusiso Mndaweni. The album’s lyrics connect seemingly unrelated activities—such as a mother going to the marketplace, a father attending a racecourse, and anti-colonial resistance chants—to reflect deeper connections between everyday life and broader socio-political themes. Similarly, the five solo exhibitions in First Double 1 & 2 explore diverse yet interconnected topics, including spiritual technologies, mineral extraction, land-related issues, queer cosmologies, and the recollection of historical events. Also included within the series are solo exhibitions by Jabu Arnell, Luana Vitra, Cihad Caner, and Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide).