The Off-Modern

by Boym, Svetlana

• ISBN13: 9781501328978
• ISBN10: 1501328972
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-06-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Svetlana Boym was a visual artist, writer of fiction, literary critic, and Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction (Tamar Abramov, Koc University, Turkey; Giuliana Bruno, Harvard University, USA; David Damrosch, Harvard University, USA)
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
14. Alternative Solidarities and 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
Practices
Unforeseen Homecoming
Phantasmagorias of History
Turning the Page on the Avant-Garde
Hybrid Utopias
Global Transits and Portable Homes
Postindustrial Art Nouveau: Tirana Arabesques 2010
Multitasking with Clouds
Airport Ruins
Hydrant Immigrants
Not Working
Black Mirrors

Notes