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 IllustrationsPreface David Damrosch (Harvard University, USA)I: Perspectives1: History Out-of-Sync2: Cultural Exaptation3: Human Error4: Nostalgic Technologies5: Digital Resident Aliens6. Edgy Geography7. Archive of Pentimenti8. Perspectivism9: Prospective Nostalgia10: Ruinophilia11: Off-Modern Urbanism12: Embarrassing Monumentality13: Tact and Touch14: Diasporic Intimacy15: Immigrant Arts16: Alternative Solidarities, Feminine Friendships17: Estrangement for the World18: Defamiliarized Human19: Squiggles, Spirals and Serpentine Dances20: The Off-Modern Museum21: Hypertextual Design and Essayistic Drift22: On OffII: Practices23: Unforeseen Homecoming24: Phantasmagorias of History25: Turning the page on the Avant-Garde26: Hybrid Utopias27: Global Transits and Portable Homes28: Postindustrial Art Nouveau: Tirana Arabesque 201029: Multitasking with Clouds30: Airport Ruins31: Hydrant Immigrants32: Not Working33: Black MirrorsNotesBibliography