Humancoffee Room

The Humancoffee Room (2020-) is an ongoing multifaceted, interdisciplinary and international collaboration initiated by Harrie Liveart in collaboration with anthrozoologist Jes Hooper. Through the medium of artistic research, performance art, storytelling and ethnography, they collectively explore human and animal relationships within global commodity chains.

The world's most expensive coffee, Civet Coffee, traditionally produced from the excrement of civets, was the starting point for this project. Using performative methods, Harrie Liveart produced an even more expensive coffee - Human Coffee - using their own digestive system.

By utilising that which we biologically share with civets, this project brings about the need for further ethical consideration when employing bodies as mouth to anus production lines.

To date, our project has culminated in the following works:

Coffee H. Liveart (2019–2022) 4x20g of packaged Human Coffee Beans
Video 1 Video of a performative research detailing the production process of Human Coffee
Video 2 process of the Electron Microscopy Scanning (SEM scan)
(l) & ( ) (2019–2022) SEM images of Human Coffee Beans
Scientific article 'Technologies, Bodies and Faecal Matters: Embodied Empathy with Coffee Producing Civets. In Press, Transpositions Journal, link to article.
Educational Board (2022) A hand-painted educational poster about the production of human coffee
Coffee Bean (2022) A ceramic sculpture inspired by the SEM scans of the human coffee bean.
Conference presentations and seminars
An auction of 20g Human Coffee

This project will continue until 2025.
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Humancoffee Room

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