'This anthology surveys art's fin-de-siècle turn not only towards histories, archives, relics of modernities past, but the phenomena, in themselves, of “haunting,” invocation and the activation of memory. Situating contemporary work in relation to artistic and theoretical developments that go back to early modernism, it encompasses diverse relationships to memory association, reappearance, mnemonic repetition, remembrance and active forgetting.

'Artists surveyed include: Marina Abramovic, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Kutlug Ataman, Uta Barth, Tom Burr, Sophie Calle, Paul Chan, Desire Machine Collective, Stan Douglas, Cheryl Dunye, Kota Ezawa, Jef Geys, Liam Gillick, Shumona Goel, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sharon Hayes, Amar Kanwar, William Kentridge, Idris Khan, Zoe Leonard, Ilán Lieberman, Glenn Ligon, Elizabeth Manchester, Kabir Mohanty, Robert Morris, Rabih Mroué, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Uriel Orlow, Philippe Parreno, Walid Raad, Anri Sala, Fazal Sheikh, Lorna Simpson, Vivan Sundaram, Luc Tuymans, Kara and Walker.

'Writers include Daniel Birnbaum, Nicolas Bourriaud, Victor Burgin, Johanna Burton, T. J. Demos, Ollivier Dyens, Okwui Enwezor, Briony Fer, Sylvie Fortin, Hal Foster, Maurice Halbwachs, Margaret Iversen, Martin Jay, Tom McDonough, Michael Newman, Pierre Nora, Georges Perec, Peggy Phelan, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Hans Rudolf Reust, Paul Ricoeur, Lisa Saltzman, Lauren Sedofsky, Roger Shattuck, Michael Sheringham, Bernard Stiegler, Margaret Sundell and Jan Verwoert.' (Back cover)

Memory is one of the Documents of Contemporary Art series, co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. Other sourcebooks of the same series are also available in the Archive. For more details, please go to this page.