Animals have become the focus of much recent art, informing numerous works and projects featured at major exhibitions including dOCUMENTA (13) (2013), the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), and the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Contemporary art has emerged as a privileged terrain for exploring interspecies relationships, providing the conditions for diverse disciplines and theoretical positions to engage with animal behavior and consciousness.
This interest in animal nature reflects a number of current issues. Observations of empathy among nonhumans prompt reconsiderations of the human. The nonverbal communication of animals has been compared with poetic expansion of the boundaries of language. And the freedom of animal life in the wild from capitalist subordination is seen as a potential model for reconfiguring society and our relationship to the wider environment. Artists' engagement with animals also opens up new perspectives on the dynamics of dominance, oppression, and exclusion, with parallels in human society. Animal nature is at the heart of debates on the Anthropocene era and the ecological concerns of scientists, thinkers, and artists alike. Centered on contemporary artworks, this anthology attests to the trans-disciplinary nature of this subject, with art as one of the principal points of convergence.
Artists surveyed include Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Als, Lygia Clark, Marcus Coates, Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Marcel Dzama, Kodwo Eshun, Simone Forti, Tue Greenford, João Maria Gusmão, Pierre Huyghe, Joan Jonas, Brian Jungen, Mike Kelley, Duane Linklater, Marina McDougall, Daniel Steegman Mangrane, Chris Marker, Max Neumann, Pedro Paiva, Lea Porsager, Carolee Schneemann, Michael Stevenson, Rodel Tapaya, Frances Upritchard, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Haegue Yang
Writers include Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Steve Baker, Raymond Bellour, Walter Benjamin, John Berger, Jonathan Burt, Ted Chiang, Simon Critchley, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, David Elliott, Carla Freccero, Maria Fusco, Tristan Garcia, Felix Guattari, Donna J. Haraway, Seung-Hoon Jeong, Chan Koonchung, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Miwon Kwon, Tânia Stolze Lima, Chus Martinez, Brian Massumi, Thomas Nagel, Jean-Luc Nancy, Ingo Niermann, Vincent Normand, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Deborah Bird Rose, Adriano Sack, Will Self, Michael Taussig, Oxana Timofeeva, Jan Verwoert, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Industry Reviews
'Filipa Ramos's intelligent introduction prefaces her carefully curated collections of writings by artists, philosophers, and writers that explore the relationship between contemporary art and animals. An indispensable collection of documents, Animals will appeal to all those interested in 'animal-connected modes of being in the world' and their radical potential, as well as those who believe that 'every word was once an animal'.'? 'Avery Gordon, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara 'Animals have been imperative to art-making since humans first made marks on the walls of subterranean chambers. It is one of the longest threads in the story of culture. This terrific volume features some of the brightest contemporary minds, demonstrating how thinking about other animals in art remains as vital, complex, and paradoxical as it has ever been.'? 'Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood, Artists 'The animal has always been essential to art, indispensable in the production of subjectivities and conceptions of the anima. This adeptly edited collection assembles reflections on animal metaphors in the arts and their bearings on actual cross-species relations. Contrary to the contemporary ideology of total communicability that underpins the alliance of information-age control-technology with neoliberalism, these texts demonstrate that there is no easy access to animal otherness without a transformation of human self-understanding.'? 'Anselm Franke, Head of Visual Arts and Film, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
