A bittersweet brew: exploring the role of nostalgia in speculative rituals is a speculative design exhibition set in the year 2050, exhibited at Kazerne Eindhoven in 2024. This speculative shift towards the future explored the sociocultural aftermath of coffee extinction through the intimate act of nostalgic scent-making. Consequently, this research-through-design project asked:
Research question How can nostalgia play a role in speculative rituals to promote reflection on the contemporary practices of coffee-drinking and making to surface the embedded social and cultural values we share and sociopolitical tensions that arise?
The exhibition experience unfolds through three speculative fabulations; It’s All Gone, Collective Nostalgia, and I Need Closure. Visitors begin by encountering a cabinet of rarities—a time capsule preserving the tools, rituals, and emotions once tied to coffee culture. From there, visitors engage with 3 questions that were designed to surface shared nostalgia and the cultural depth of coffee rituals. The journey culminates in a personal ritual that allows for honoring the past and accepting the present: blending your own nostalgic scent as a symbolic farewell to coffee, and a personal closure to its imagined extinction. Together, these stages guide visitors through loss, shared memory, and ultimately closure in a world where a once taken-for-granted ritual has vanished.