Tate Exchange: POWER OF MATERIALS: COFFEE

Who is in power? Who holds the power to create change? Consumers? Retailers? Legislators? Dialogue on solutions have often stagnated around choices and behaviour. In light of the current social and ecological crises, the illusion of infinite consumption must be challenged. Industrial operations and global economic activity impact the environment on a macro scale long before an individual makes a purchase. Explore these questions and more over two days.

Reflect thinking

Through this activity we use coffee grounds to make coffee sculpture. Customers take part in the activity to get a punch card first. (We prepare punch card in three types one point\two point\three point in which way symbol people use different amount of natural resources all these will cause some irreversible negative effects on the nature.) As the number on the punch card people the corresponding number coffee bricks needs to be done mechanically and put on to the top of coffee sculpture. Build up to a certain number of coffee cubes on the coffee sculpture that will lead to unbalance of the whole sculpture, it will collapse. We use one of the world’s most popular drinks-coffee help people to understand in recent year people start to repair the natural environment we have destroyed we cannot ignore the serious consequences will be avenged on future generations of mankind.

We divided 17 people into 8 groups that 2 or 3 people a day as partner to collect a huge bag of coffee grounds. Bring it back to our studio and divide into 3 pools depends on the humidity. Damp coffee grounds tend to agglomerate and become moldy, so use tools to crack them, and sieve the clumps through a sieve after they dry.