Rock by rock, this dazzling volume invites us to engage with a progressively nuanced reading of geology's history and its lasting colonial legacy
If you enter an institutional mineralogical collection, you typically encounter glass cabinets organized by classification systems according to material properties. Yet, each mineral carries with it a history of extraction, destruction, (dis)possession, and global relations. Transpositional Geologies localizes such collections as indices of the afterlife of colonialism and proposes an evolving political geology, reading mineral specimens as objects of “culture” rather than of “nature.” Capturing his five-year artistic engagement and cultural collaboration in Namibia and Germany, Sascha Mikloweit brings together international voices from fields including anthropology, critical theory, geology, history, museum studies, philosophy, poetry, public administration—and the perspectives of boltwoodite, cerussite, or smithsonite. Rock by rock, this exquisitely designed volume invites us to engage with a progressively nuanced reading of geology’s history: its epistemic violence, omissions and racial regimes, and how the lasting residues of its colonial legacies continue to shape our present-day extractive realities.
Sascha Mikloweit is a research artist-in-residence at the Mineralogical Collections of the Technical University of Berlin (20252027), where he initiated and leads the project Transpositional Geologies, which he initiated in 2019. Contributing to an evolving political geology, Mikloweit examines the mineralogical collections in relation to epistemic violence, racialised matter, extractivism, and asymmetrical power relations, with a particular focus on the collections significance as the origin of one of the dominant taxonomic systems in contemporary mineralogy. Mikloweit is an Honorary Associate of the Global Heritage Lab, Critical Museum and Heritage Studies, University Bonn and he holds an MA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UAL, London, where he graduated with distinction.
With texts by Saima Ashipala, Paul Basu, Charmaine //Gamxamus, Johannes Giebel, Elizabeth Grosz, Maria-Oo Haihambo, Selby Hearth, Bastian Herbst, Chris Hill, Herbert Jauch, Juuso Kaluvi, Veripuami Nandee Kangumine, Malina Lauterbach, Helmut Maier, Prince Kamaazengi Marenga I, Sascha Mikloweit, Hidipo Nangolo, Paul OKane, Jermaine Solunga, Ellison Tjirera, Kuhepa Tjondu, Samo Tomi, Kathryn Yusoff.
