With a current rate of extinction estimated at over one hundred species per day, the anthropogenic extermination of non-human forms-of-life on Earth is rightly a cause of serious alarm. Such a rate of extinction is made even more troubling when one considers that with the disappearance of each species, the planet not only loses one of its constituent actors, but also greatly diminishes the processes of planetary evolution, as the potential for species' adaptability rapidly decreases with each and every loss. Following several years of commissioned field work in the global biodiversity hotspots of Nusantara and Amazonia, as well as extensive archival research in major natural history collections, this edited volume weaves together voices and narratives, from science and documentary, to philosophy and poetry, to ask how the concept of “nature” might be meaningfully reassembled against the backdrop of mass extinction.

Anna-Sophie Springer is a writer, curator, and founding codirector of K. Verlag, an independent Berlin­-based press. Her practice stimulates fluid relations among images, artifacts, and texts in order to produce new geographical, physical, and cognitive proximities, often in relation to historical archives. She received her MA in contemporary art theory from Goldsmiths, University of London, and her MA in curatorial studies from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. In 2014, she was associate editor of publications for the 8th Berlin Biennale, and the Craig-­Kade Visiting Scholar-­in-­Residence at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Currently, she is a visiting lecturer at Institut Kunst, Basel. With Etienne Turpin, she is the coprincipal investigator of the exhibition-led inquiry Reassembling the Natural and the coeditor of the intercalations: paginated exhibitions series as part of Das Anthropozän­ Projekt at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt as well as of Fantasies of the Library (MIT Press, 2016).

Etienne Turpin is a philosopher, research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founding director of anexact office (Jakarta and Berlin). With Anna-Sophie Springer, he is coprincipal investigator of the exhibition-led inquiry Reassembling the Natural and coeditor of the intercalations: paginated exhibition series published by K. Verlag and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He is also the coeditor of Fantasies of the Library (MIT Press, 2016), Art in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2015), and Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013), and editor of Architecture in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2013). He has taught graduate design and theory at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan; and the University of Toronto.