In The Netherlands, the dairy farming industry is being questioned for its adverse effect on nature, particularly in the context of the so-called nitrogen crisis. To better address the environmental problems caused by farming, it is important to understand how technoscientific developments are affecting those places where food is produced. How has the design of farm buildings, animal bodies and technologies transformed Dutch dairy landscapes?
The development of the first working prototype of a milking robot in 1992 marked the beginning of a digital revolution in dairy farming. Today, self-guided barn cleaners, automated kitchen and feeding systems, robotic fencers, sensor-packed cow collars, smartphone apps, artificial intelligence assistants, among other innovations, have replaced human labor and reportedly improved animal welfare. However, the widespread adoption of automation, in combination with innovations in genomics and feeding, also facilitates the operations and management of larger, industrial farms.
Calvert usefully conceptualized the assemblage of bovines, humans, robots, algorithms, and reproductive techniques as cowborgs, in reference to Donna Haraway’s influential definition of the cyborg. Cowborgs in the Polder, funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO), has been exploring the interactions between human and non-human animals, robots, data technologies, genomics, and farm architecture in the industrialized Dutch dairy landscapes.
The project has taken a step further and looked at those cowborgs in the materiality of the Dutch polder—in its constructions and designs.
Contribution to exhibition ‘From Raster to Vector’ at Radius Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology
From Raster to Vector: The Netherlands as Profit Landscape was a group exhibition held at Radius Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology (18 May – 25 August 2024). It focused on the malleability and profitability of the Dutch landscape through global and advanced capitalism. In this exhibition, Víctor Muñoz Sanz presented the initial part of his research, which focuses on the Holstein Friesian cow, a breed that originates from Friesland and that has become the dominant breed in industrial dairy farming worldwide.
The presentation consisted of a video essay that weaves images from the Holland Holstein Show—a contest aiming to promote the Holstein breed among Dutch famers—with an interview with Quim Serrabassa, competition judge and manager of a company specialised in genetics and in the selection of that breed. The video introduced the Ideal True Type Holstein Cow, a painting commissioned by the Holstein Association USA and the internationally recognised yardstick for perfect body proportions, tailoring it to industrial tools like automated milking systems. In combination with the video, he also presented an engraved drawing of the ideal true type Holstein cow, with all the measurements, proportions, and angles that would enable the replication of a perfectly productive specimen. Transposing the current official painting of the Holstein cow by the artist Bonnie Mohr to a diagram, Muñoz Sanz revealed the elaborate design thinking behind contemporary animal breeding to maximise dairy production.
The exhibition was curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, assisted by Sergi Pera Rusca. Participating artists included: Berkveldt, Daan Couzijn, Mirte van Laarhoven & Anne Nieuwenhuijs, Vera Mennens, Víctor Muñoz Sanz, Sissel Marie Tonn & Jonathan Reus, Joppe Venema, and works from the Collection of the Cultural Heritage Agency by: Joop Dam, Ben Ikelaar, Edith van Leckwijk, and Eduard van Zanden
Symposium
The symposium Cowborgs in the Polder (September 12, 2024) was the closing event of this research project, and counted with contributions by Taneha K. Bacchin, Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Catia Faria, Nikos Katsikis, Víctor Muñoz Sanz, Sofia Nannini, Katy Overstreet, Jolijn Schilder, Gent Shehu, Lenneke Slangen, and Abbie Vandivere.
Contributions to this event were organized in a sequence of eight interlocked chapters. Highlighting a diversity of disciplines and approaches, presenters explored questions around the cultural significance of cows and farming, processes of rural modernization, the design of animal bodies and farm buildings, the role of technology in the instrumentalization of animal labor, the planetary footprint of farming, notions of care in human-cow-microbe-landscape entanglements, and questions of animal, feminist and AI ethics. This structure embraces the multifaceted complexity of the topic, encourages cross-pollination, and invites participants and audience to weave unexpected threads across topics. Ultimately, this event aimed to foster a conversation on what forms of engagement with dairy farming, its histories, science and politics, animals and peoples would be needed to become worldly and build more livable other worlds.
Cowborgs in the Polder: how the design of farm buildings, animal bodies and technologies transformed Dutch dairy landscapes is a project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through the grant SSH Open Competition XS Pilot 2022–23 round three (project 406.XS.03-056). Principal Investigator: Víctor Muñoz Sanz; Research Assistant: Divya Agarwal. Critical Environments Group, Section of Urban Design, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.
