Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology

Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology is a new experimental film installation by Nolan Oswald Dennis ruminating on geological-spiritual structures of deep time and archaeological memory under conditions of landlessness.

Orbiting the Mapungubwe cultural landscape, the film draws on Keorapetse

Kgositsile’s notion of the past present future as a guide to the science (and)

fictions of seeing the land and knowing the world from the Sashe-Limpopo

confluence.

A set of speculative devices for looking inspired by a complex history of seeing

and touching the land in Mapungubwe accompany the film. These instruments act

as intermediaries which occlude, distort, and intercede between the image and

the viewer, transforming what is offered and what is taken.

Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology is a meditation on the poetics of desire,

deformation, and estrangement. Treating them as useful allies in staging a

dialogue for reconstructing ethical relations to the land (and the planet) where no

such relation is possible.

Commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation