Antennae #49 Making Nature

Book excerpt: This issue of Antennae, and the next, are informed by the exhibition Making Nature: How We See Animals the exhibition curated by Honor Beddard at Wellcome Collection in London between the 1st of December 2016 and the 21st of May 2017. This first installment, Making Nature, which takes its title from the exhibition, looks at the construction of nature as a cultural pursuit during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It focuses on issues of visibility and invisibility, both cultural and ecological, to critically appraise the methodological approaches that have defined the philosophies of the discipline. Technologies of visibility like taxidermy, dioramas, macro-photography, and illustration are juxtaposed to highlight the complicity of art and science in the production of fictional narratives about the world we live in.