“Hornless Heritage”


(2014 - 2017)

“German dairy cow in the age of its technical reproducibility”

Just like its country’s famous automotive brands, German dairy breeds - known as ‘turbo cows’ - are very popular all over the world because of their performance and reliability. Thanks to computer technologies in the last decades, German scientists have compiled millions of breeding values together along with knowledge about genomic code, which has allowed them to design an animal with up to four times higher milk output and even breed out undesirable traits such as the animal’s horns. For a cow, evolutionary horns mean protection and autonomy. They are even important for the milk performance and overall condition of the animal. However, within the setting of huge, fully automated farms populated by hundreds of cows, horns are viewed as too dangerous. After decades of painful dehorning of cattle with a branding iron, scientists now predict that cows in the future could be rendered hornless by birth and retain the same peak milk performance due to the innovations of German cattle breeders. In an age where technological advancement and financial gains have created a culture of perfectionism, what will be the role for the cow itself as a living being in the years to come?

- ARTE Award Berlin 2018
- Kassel Dummy Award shortlist 2018
- Voies Off, Arles 2018
- Lumix Festival Shortlist 2018
- 3rd Place, Open category at NTU IPA, Singapore 2017
- Shortlisted at the Athens Photo Festival 2017

Published in VICE (DE), Le Monde M (FR), FuturZwei, WIRED (US), It's Nice That, Fluter.de, Süddeutsche Zeitung











Schauraum, FH Dortmun Layout design in collaboration with Wolfgang Zurborn, Juli 2017















      
                                                                           
                                                                    
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