Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies .

This anthology contextualizes art that proposes alternatives to the models of linear time that have underpinned both capitalism and progressive modernity. Contemporary art has explored such diverse registers of temporality as `wasting and waiting; regression and repetition; deja vu and seriality; unrealized possibility and idleness; non-consummation and counter-productivity; the belated and the premature; the disjointed and the out-of-synch - all of which go against sequentialist time and index slips in chronological experience.' While theorists such as Giorgio Agamben and Mieke Bal have proposed `polychronic', `heterochronic' or `anachronic' readings of history, artists have opened up the field of time to the extent that the very notion of the contemporary is brought into question.

Artists surveyed include: Marina Abramovic, Doug Aitken, Francis Alys, Matthew Buckingham, Janet Cardiff, Paul Chan, Jeanette Christensen, Moyra Davey, Dexter Sinister, Olafur Eliasson, Bea Fremderman, Antony Gormley, Douglas Gordon, Tehching Hsieh, Toril Johannessen, On Kawara, Joachim Koester, Lee Ufan, Christian Marclay, nova Milne, Trevor Paglen, Philippe Parreno, Katie Paterson, Raqs Media Collective, Sylvia Sleigh, Simon Starling, Michael Stevenson, Hito Steyerl, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Time/Bank and Agnes Varda.

Writers includ: Giorgio Agamben, Emily Apter, Karen Archey, St Augustine, Mieke Bal, Geoffrey Batchen, Hans Belting, Franco `Bifo' Berardi, Henri Bergson, Daniel Birnbaum, Yve-Alain Bois, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Gilles Deleuze, Georges Didi-Huberman, Brian Dillon, Elena Filipovic, Elizabeth Grosz, Boris Groys, Rachel Kent, Rosalind Krauss, George Kubler, Quinn Latimer, Bruno Latour, Doreen Massey, Jean-Luc Nancy, Michel Serres, Michel Siffre, Mark von Schlegell, Nancy Spector, Jan Verwoert and Dogen Zenji.