Reflective Coffee Corner is a space that invites critical thinking around coffee’s complex social and material entanglements with the world, by means of a series of reflective, collaborative coffee servings. It took place in November 2024 in the Dutch National Archive, where one can read about the Dutch colonial coffee trade, during the Archival Frictions exhibition aimed at questioning the colonial gaze that underpins the archive's material.
Photo by Roel Backaert for the master Non-Linear Narrative.
The Coffea Arabica plant was stolen by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from the
port city of Mocha, Yemen, to be forcefully planted in the then Dutch-controlled island
of Java, giving European colonial powers a way into the coffee trade. 400 years later,
we can hear the echoes of this act of capitalist extractivism resonating in our modern
relationship with the caffeinated beverage.
The collaborative coffee servings create a moment for coffee to be reclaimed not as yet another quick-fix for productivity, but as an opportunity to gather around and share stories, sparking critical conversations about our relationship with it. During each serving, the brewing process is broken into stages and interwoven with re-tellings of the Dutch colonial history with coffee, informed by my own research in the National Archive, told from the perspective of the Coffea Arabica plant herself, as a more-than-human entity.
Photo by Roel Backaert for the master Non-Linear Narrative.
The collaborative coffee servings create a moment for coffee to be reclaimed not as yet another quick-fix for productivity, but as an opportunity to gather around and share stories, sparking critical conversations about our relationship with it. During each serving, the brewing process is broken into stages and interwoven with re-tellings of the Dutch colonial history with coffee, informed by my own research in the National Archive, told from the perspective of the Coffea Arabica plant herself, as a more-than-human entity.
As they enjoy their carefully brewed coffee, each participant is invited to discuss a question attached to their coffee, fuelling the conversation further. The Reflective Coffee Corner servings ran parallel to a A Reflective Cup of Coffee, a video essay focused solely on the re-telling of coffee’s colonial history.