The Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP) and TORCH are delighted to host the inagaural BRIDGE Fellowship event as part of the BRIDGE Fellowship Programme at the Universty of Oxford.
We invite registrations to attend film screening titled, Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology followed by a discussion with the artist Nolan Oswald Dennis, KJ Abudu, Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Javett-UP curator Gillian Fleischmann.
Date: Wednesday 5th June
Time: Doors are open from 18.30 and the film screening and discussion will begin at 19.00, to conclude by 20.30
Location: The Africa Centre, 66 - 68 Great Suffolk St, London SE1 0BL
The closest tube station is Southwark
Tickets are free but registrations are required for this event, please sign up via Eventbrite
Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology is a set of para-fictional devices and a speculative film that enact a reverse archaeology of the Mapungubwe Complex: a collection of 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. Reverse archaeology refers to the artist’s refusal to treat the past as a resource to be extracted (from the earth). Instead this work performs a series of alterations to the instruments, structures and technologies of archaeological practice in order to prepare them for a more radical trajectory.
Drawing from indigenous techno-spiritual histories Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology imagines a series of non-extractive engagements with the material and ethereal world connected to Mapungubwe. Against colonial imaginaries of landscapes primed for extraction (of gold, of diamonds, of history, of ancestral bodies, of knowledge) the para-fictional devices in this work engage a landscape primed for return. Specifications for a Reverse Archaeology reengineers techniques, instruments and practices toward a different relation to deep time, black space and the anticipation of an alter-future.
Collection Hartwig Art Foundation. Promised gift to the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed / Rijkscollectie. Collectie Hartwig Art Foundation. Toegezegde gift aan de Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed / Rijkscollectie
Nolan Oswald Dennis is a para-disciplinary artist living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their practice explores ‘a black consciousness of space’ - the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization - questioning histories of space and time through system-specific interventions. They hold a BA degree in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and a MA degree in Art, Culture and Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
They are a member of the Index Literacy Program, the scientific committee of the Edouard Glissant Art Fund and a research associate at the VIAD research centre at the University of Johannesburg,
Their work has been featured in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), the Seoul Mediacity Biennial, Young Congo Biennale (Kinshasa), FRONT triennial (Columbus), Shanghai Biennial, Liverpool Biennial and the Lagos Biennial among others.
KJ Abudu is a curator and critic based between New York, London, and Lagos. Informed by anti/post/de-colonial theory, queer theory, African philosophy, and Black radical thought, his writings and exhibitions focus on critical art and intellectual practices from the global South responding to the world-historical conditions produced by colonial modernity. Recent exhibitions include Traces of Ecstasy, Lagos Biennial Fourth Edition, 2024, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, 2024; Clocking Out: Time Beyond Management, Artists Space and e-flux Screening Room, New York, 2023; and Living with Ghosts, Pace Gallery, London, 2022, and the Wallach Art Gallery, New York, 2022. Abudu is the editor of Living with Ghosts: A Reader, Pace Publishing, 2022. His writings have appeared in e-flux, Frieze, Mousse, Tate Etc., and numerous other publications and exhibition catalogues. Abudu is part of the curatorial team at the Swiss Institute (SI), New York, overseeing its public programs and residencies.
About Javett UP: The Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett-UP) is a partnership between the University of Pretoria and the Javett Foundation. Both share a firm belief in the emancipatory potential of the arts in society through multidisciplinary curatorial and pedagogic initiatives. With one foot firmly rooted in academia, and the other imbedded in the public, Javett-UP critically responds to histories of Africa’s creative outputs and future aspirations of the continent and the diaspora.
Central to Javett-UP is our commitment to continuous de-colonial dialogues that respond to the present whilst considering the historical and the future implications of our political and social actions. Javett-UP is committed to sustained critical enquiries where activities of writers, researchers, advocacy groups, historians, political scientists, musicians, etc can intersect.
Javett-UP BRIDGE Fellowship Programme in association with the University of Oxford
