“DOMESTIC” by Katrina Stamatopoulos

Last year I had the pleasure of being interviewed by artist Katrina Stamatopoulos for her book DOMESTIC, which was published in December 2024. The book contains some stunning visual materials and–relatively unedited, almost as they happened–excerpts of conversations between us about animal breeding, quantitative genetics and evolution of domestic animals.

Katrina writes:

DOMESTIC is grounded in research on the food production industry, and focuses on relationships between humans and animals, eaters and eaten.

The project stems from a batch of found 16mm agricultural and advertising footage shot in America in the 1960’s; a poignant time for industrial and technological change in agriculture. With labor and land being increasingly replaced by chemical applications and machine advancements, commercial farms were morphing larger in size and fewer in number. Agriculture continues to chase its tail.

As the found 16mm film aged over time, portions became pierced by the 16mm projector needing to be snipped off bit by bit. Hand printing these isolated strips in the darkroom form a basis of DOMESTIC’s visual narrative, with positive to negative and negative to positive transitioning. The process trajected towards photographing farm work in rural NSW, Australia, to documenting manufactured food waste in London, UK; found human x-rays, scientific imagery and site specific installation accumulate, to explore the body as a ‘coop’.

This book work looks specifically at some of our closest companion species, livestock and poultry: and how they experience gene silencing, mutations and behavioural change throughout evolution, and through living in close proximity with humans.

DOMESTIC poses important questions around what biological adaptations may occur in the future for these co-dependent relationships, and features excerpts of conversations between Katrina Stamatopoulos and Martin Johnsson, Quantitative Geneticist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.