Edited by Filipa Ramos

Part of the acclaimed Documents of Contemporary Art series of anthologies which collect writing on major themes and ides in contemporary art.

"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

Animals have become the focus of much recent art, informing numerous works and projects featured at major exhibitions. Contemporary art has become a privileged terrain for exploring interspecies relationships, providing the conditions for diverse disciplines and theoretical positions to engage with animal behaviour and consciousness. Artists’ engagement with animals opens up new perspectives on the dynamics of dominance, oppression and exclusion, with parallels in human society; and animal nature is at the heart of debates on the ‘anthropocene’ era and the ecological concerns of scientists, thinkers and artists alike. Centred on contemporary artworks, this anthology attests to the trans-disciplinary nature of this subject, with art as one of its principal points of convergence.

The volume also Includes a newly commissioned poem by the artist Joan Jonas.

Artists surveyed include Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Julieta Aranda, Brando Ballengée, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Marcus Coates, Jimmie Durham, Marcel Dzama, Simone Forti, Pierre Huyghe, Natalie Jeremijenko, Joan Jonas, Eduardo Kac, Mike Kelley, Henri Michaux, Robert Morris, Henrik Olesen, Lea Porsager, Carolee Schneemann, Michael Stevenson, Rodel Tapaya, Rosemarie Trockel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Haegue Yang, Adam Zaretsky.

Writers include Giorgio Agamben, 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, Félix Guattari, Donna J. Haraway, Seung-Hoon Jeong, Miwon Kwon, Chus Martinez, Brian Massumi, Thomas Nagel, Jean- Luc Nancy, Ingo Niermann, Vincent Normand, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Adriano Sack, Will Self, Jan Verwoert, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.

Filipa Ramos is editor in chief of art-agenda and a lecturer in experimental film at Kingston University and moving image at Central Saint Martins, London. She is the author of Lost and Found – Crisis of Memory in Contemporary Art (2009).

Paperback, 240 pages, 210 x 145 mm

ISBN 978-0-85488-249-6

First published 2016

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