VIIIACKNOWLEDGMENTSinitial animal studies platform upon which the key arguments of this
book stand was developed at the London meetings of the British Animal
Studies Network held between 2007 and 2009, which I religiously at-
tended. Many chapters featured in this book were presented at confer-
ences in Europe and the United States. I therefore thank the scholars and
graduate students who have helped me to fine-tune key arguments and
ideas.
Despite its origin, this book is not an adapted PhD thesis. The end of
my PhD studies felt like the beginning of something important, and thus
I wanted to begin a new journey on the grounds of what I had learned
through my research at Goldsmiths. The concept of speculative taxidermy
emerged then. After I relocated to Chicago and found time to put Foucault
on one side, I could focus on the emerging philosophies of object-oriented
ontology and new materialism. This second stage of this project was sub-
stantially shaped by the reading materials and by those who attended the
2014 and 2015 incarnations of Following Nonhuman Kinds, a Chicago-
based reading group organized by Rebecca Beachy, Caroline Picard, and
Andrew Yang. From these meetings, friendships and important conversa-
tions on the subject of taxidermy and the nonhuman have also developed
with, among others, artists Doug Fogelson, Jenny Kendler, Karsten Lund,
and Claire Pentecost. I would like to mention the influence of the Animal/
Nonhuman Workshop meetings held at the University of Chicago. Also
important to the content of this book have been the conversations on non-
human representation in digital media held at Digital Animalities, a project
funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council involving
a cohort of international animal studies scholars including, among others,
Jody Berland, Matthew Brower, Robert McKay, Anat Pick, Nicole Shukin,
and Tom Tyler. I also wish to thank the undergraduate students at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago who, every year, enroll in my class
Surface Tensions: Taxidermy in Contemporary Art. Their insights, dis-
cussions, and motivation to get to the bottom of what taxidermy can bring
to art practice keep my interest in this subject constant.
I am particularly grateful to all artists featured in this book for their
kind collaboration and patience in answering my questions and helping
with clearing permission rights for the use of their images. Most especially
I would like to thank Robbi Siegel at Art Resource, Inc.; Sylvia Bandi and
Julia Lenz at Hauser and Wirth; Gina C. Guy at the Robert Rauschenberg