Technologies, Bodies and Faecal Matters: Embodied Empathy with Coffee Producing Civets

This research applies a transdisciplinary and transnational approach between visual artists, anthrozoologists, and biological scientists to problematize the acclaimed status of civet coffee, both its methods of production and authentication. Firstly, attempting to gain an embodied perspective of animal mechanization, we used our own bodies to ‘become with’ our civet informants. By adhering to the same procedure as civet coffee production, we created 80 g of human-digested coffee. Secondly, we followed a scientific protocol utilized for civet coffee authentication, in which we examined samples of our product using scanning electron microscopy, the results of which we then compared to previously published findings for civet coffee. Our results illustrate the complexities involved in multispecies world making whilst highlighting the significant ethical issues surrounding digested coffee production and the flawed process of authentication.