Under the surface: hunting, collecting and taxidermy in Ulrich Seidl's Safari (2016) and Joerg Burger's Archiv der Zukunft (2023)

This article considers the pivotal role of taxidermy in Ulrich Seidl's Safari(2016)—a film about big game hunting in Africa—and Joerg Burger's 2023 portrait of Vienna's Natural History Museum, Archiv der Zukunft. Despite their differences, not least in location, the films' shared focus on taxidermy allows for an interrogation of how collections—private and institutional—come to be. Read together, Safariand Archiv der Zukunftreveal how colonial history and neocolonial practices converge in trophy hunting and the drive to collect. Drawing also on the Safariphotobook, which figures as a pendant to Seidl's film, the article argues for taxidermy's disruptive potential to expose repressed violence past and present.