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.Artists surveyed include Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alys, Julieta Aranda, Brando Ballengee, 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, AdamZaretsky.
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, Felix 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.