Erasure Beds (+ drooping horns) (2023) invites a reflection on the intersection of agriculture, spirituality, and the human-altered natural world. At the heart of the installation are four industrial cow waterbeds, which provide dairy cows with a soft resting surface—a stark contrast to the harsh concrete floors they often stand on in modern farming. The beds, almost haunting in their stillness, suggest the presence of the cows that have seemingly seeped into the material itself, blurring the line between care and control in industrial agriculture.

The drooping horns, however, draw us into a deeper, spiritual layer. Referencing Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic farming philosophy, where a cow’s horns were believed to connect it to cosmic energies, the work speaks to the ancient idea of spiritual vitality intertwined with the natural world. Yet in today’s industrial farming, where most cows are dehorned, Erasure Beds poignantly calls attention to the erasure of these connections—both physical and metaphysical.

Porsager’s work thus becomes a meditation on the loss of spiritual and cosmic links within the mechanized, dehumanized environments of contemporary agriculture. Through the act of dehorning, not only are the cows physically altered, but a deeper, esoteric disconnection is suggested—between humanity, nature, and the unseen cosmic forces that once bound them together.

“I“It is so indeed: if you could crawl about inside the living body of a cow — if you were there inside the belly of the cow — you would smell how the astral life and the living vitality pours inward from the horns.” – R. Steiner