Most notions of time (Progress, Evolution, Avantgarde) are put in terms of biology. Analogies are drawn between organic biology and technology; the nervous system is extended into electronics, and the muscular system is extended into mechanics. The workings of biology and technology belong not in the domain of art, but to the "useful" time of organic (active) duration, which is unconscious and mortal. Art mirrors the "actuality" [...]. What is actual is apart from the continuous "actions" between birth and death. [...] Whenever "action" does persist, it is unavailable or useless. In art, action is always becoming inertia, but this inertia has no ground to settle on except the mind, which is as empty as actual time.

Robert Smithson, 'Quasi-Infinities and the Waning of Space' in The Writings of Robert Smithson, (New York University Press, 1979) p. 32