Project Team: Jes Hooper

This project seeks to engage audiences to think critically about the multispecies linkages inherent to global commodity chains and personal and societal consumptive behaviours, using civet coffee as a product entry point. Civet coffee, known as the world’s most expensive and rare coffee, is produced through the digestive tract of civets, small nocturnal carnivores endemic to southeast Asia. Through the commodification of civets, we can see how seemingly disparate populations and categories are deeply interconnected through product demand and economically driven extraction processes with far reaching multispecies impacts. Civet trade is socially constructed, organised and facilitated in online, digital spaces. Rising accessibility of smartphones and internet connectivity present a “contact zone” between species, cultures, places, lived realities and emerging possibilities.Via a series of participant workshops and seminars, this project asks: If we can unravel the ways that consumers, industry leaders and policymakers connect with species whom they may be unaware even existed, can we ignite a curiosity towards a world where more positive multispecies futures are made possible?