Svetlana Boym writes a new genealogy of modernity, moving beyond older debates between modernism and postmodernism to focus on the intersection of art, architecture, technology, and philosophy in the early twenty-first century. Drawing on theories of Georg Simmel, Henri Bergson, Aby Warburg, and Jacques Derrida, Boym presents the off-modern as an eccentric, self-questioning, anti-authoritarian perspective with roots in the Russian avant-garde, now developed in surprising ways by contemporary artists, architects, and curators around the world. She illustrates the off-modern in discussions of (and with) figures as diverse as architect Rem Koolhaas, Albanian artist-turned-mayor Edi Rama, an art collective in Delhi, and the creator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Both a manifesto and a memoir, The Off-Modern often returns to themes of travel and immigration, exploring issues of diasporic intimacy and productive estrangement amid nostalgic landscapes of urban ruins.
Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface David Damrosch (Harvard University, USA) I: Perspectives 1: History Out-of-Sync 2: Cultural Exaptation 3: Human Error 4: Nostalgic Technologies 5: Digital Resident Aliens 6. Edgy Geography 7. Archive of Pentimenti 8. Perspectivism 9: Prospective Nostalgia 10: Ruinophilia 11: Off-Modern Urbanism 12: Embarrassing Monumentality 13: Tact and Touch 14: Diasporic Intimacy 15: Immigrant Arts 16: Alternative Solidarities, Feminine Friendships 17: Estrangement for the World 18: Defamiliarized Human 19: Squiggles, Spirals and Serpentine Dances 20: The Off-Modern Museum 21: Hypertextual Design and Essayistic Drift 22: On Off II: Practices 23: Unforeseen Homecoming 24: Phantasmagorias of History 25: Turning the page on the Avant-Garde 26: Hybrid Utopias 27: Global Transits and Portable Homes 28: Postindustrial Art Nouveau: Tirana Arabesque 2010 29: Multitasking with Clouds 30: Airport Ruins 31: Hydrant Immigrants 32: Not Working 33: Black Mirrors Notes Bibliography
Svetlana Boym was a literary amd cultural theorist and critic, visual artist, writer of fiction, and Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA.
Reviews for The Off-Modern
This delightful manifesto and memoir vividly captures Svetlana Boym's imaginative, passionate critical voice and creative endeavors. The Off-Modern dares to go off the beaten path to explore the side alleys of the modern project, celebrating the eccentric cultural productions that live off-center. * Giuliana Bruno, Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University, USA * Published posthumously, this book is a bitter-sweet pleasure to read. It comes from the off it theorizes, giving us a new way of thinking about art and life. The off-modern recovers impulses of the modern, expands their multiple geographic and aesthetic imaginaries in the present and projects them into the future. But it refuses to be in sync, either with a canonized past and its avant-garde utopias or with the digital techno-merchants of our day. The off-modern is a contemporary artistic practice across the world and a deeply experienced way of life for the diasporic migrant. * Andreas Huyssen, Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA *
