Downtime

On the continuing relevance of Robert Smithson.

Robert Smithson's 'A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic' set the tenuousness of cultural meaning into a long history that stretched forwards and backwards through astronomical time. So what are contemporary artists unearthing as they continue to dig through his text almost 50 years on?

'Robert Smithson's text begins in that special, unorganised and uncommodified downtime, often gifted by chance and necessary to the artist, poet, flâneur or wandering photographer for an imaginative, inspired and individuated experience to occur.'