human manure composting for a better world!
We put together a small installation based around the Yours and Owls documentary video, for the recent Northern Beaches Environmental Art and Design Award at Manly Art Gallery and Museum.
On the shelf are three ‘vintages’ of humanure we have created in recent years – from Port Kembla, Capertee Valley, and the Yours and Owls Festival.
The installation also includes a V.I.Poo Tshirt, and a poster of our humanure manifesto.
New #pootopia phase! We commissioned a custom hot pink water tank to transform into a fully portable V.I.Poo Mark2 composting dunny!
Thanks to @rotoplasrainwatertanks for fabricating this beauty for us, manufactured right here in the ‘gong (actually #unanderra of course).
We will offer this to lucky crappers at the @wollongongbotanicgarden super Saturday plant sale in November !
Thanks so much to @culturebank_wollongong for funds towards this project!
Now go listen to this!
Region Illawarra has published an interview with Pootopia artist Kim Williams, celebrating a grant awarded by Wollongong’s wonderful Culture Bank.
You can read the article here.
Thanks to Region Illawarra journalist Zoe Cartwright for the media coverage, and thank you Culture Bank for the funds!
Here’s a short video documentary created by WayWard Films in collaboration with the Pootopia! team. A glimpse at our project for the 2023 Yours and Owls Festival in Wollongong. Enjoy!
V.I.Poo at Yours and Owls Festival 2023 from Luca Zoid on Vimeo.
Poo is taboo!
Probably one of the reasons why poo is so funny (and why kids like to laugh about it) is because it’s taboo.
We laugh about poo. In our Global Challenges project, we get to enjoy a little frisson of naughtiness, because we are using the word “poo” in an academic context. Poo-puns are a useful way to get the conversation started – in our project names for example (VIPoo, Poo-topia, etc).
Poo is a taboo subject in polite society. It’s something that parents with babies are allowed to discuss, or doctors if you’ve got a stomach bug. Several years ago, when my kid was about 5, we were particularly fond of the “Bristol Stool Chart”. Now’s she’s nearly a teenager, I wonder if she would be less keen on me bringing it up in front of her buddies!
Continue reading “Poo is taboo!”
Article by Don Poo-leone
In an exclusive world premiere, the 2023 Yours and Owls Festival featured a VIPoo zone – a luxury composting toilet nestled among the music stages and art installations.
The brainchild of University of Wollongong researchers, VIPoo was promoted first and foremost as a pleasurable experience. Speaking to Glimpses of Pootopia Magazine, VIPoo spokesperson Dr Lucas Ihlein said that the team took great pains to present toileting as an aesthetic experience:
Our swanky composting dunny is a fragrant and ethical alternative to those putrescent festival portaloos we all detest. Portaloos – untended, unloved – are so often awash in excrement and garbage that many festival goers choose to “hold it in” rather than run the gauntlet. By contrast, VIPoo allows bowels and bladders to empty in complete comfort, coddled within bucolic straw-bale architecture.
Continue reading “VIPoo a triumph at Yours and Owls Festival”
Here’s an article about Pootopia in THE STAND, an online publication which champions University of Wollongong’s research projects. Thanks to writer Lizzie Jack.
The text from the article is copied below:
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Pootopia: the science, art and economics of human manure
Most of us don’t think twice about the fact that our favourite fruit and veggies are grown with the help of animal manure. But how would you feel about growing food with your own poo?
That is the question behind Dr Lucas Ihlein’s and Dr Kim Williams’ latest art installation which was launched at Yours and Owls Festival over the weekend, to promote the Global Challenges project Pootopia.
Continue reading “Pootopia: the science, art and economics of human manure”
Following the 2023 Yours and Owls Festival, we were interviewed by Stefan at ABC Radio Illawarra! Have a listen.
The following article by M. Crappington was originally published in Faecal Sludge Management Quarterly (FSMQ), and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
New human manure publication acclaimed at Land Studio launch.
Shit puns flew in the Capertee Valley at the gala launch of a new magazine championing human manure composting.
Your reporter was on the scene at the world premiere of Glimpses of Poo-topia, a publication set to revolutionise the way we think about the afterlife of our number ones and twos. 35 hand-picked participants were privy to the magazine’s long awaited drop at the 2021 Land Studio (on Snowgoose Farm near Kandos, on Dabee/Wiradjuri Country).
The new magazine lifts the lid on real experiences from amateur composting toilet trailblazers. The first two editions – published simultaneously – feature stories from regional NSW, Australia.
Continue reading “New human manure publication acclaimed at Land Studio launch.”
Volume 2 of Glimpses of Pootopia has now been published. In this edition, Mrs Kang from Port Kembla explains the material joys and social challenges of installing a human manure composting system in her backyard. With an editorial by Don Poo-leone, and a special bonus centrefold section by Mrs Kang herself.
You can read it online via ISSUU here.
You can download the PDF here.
If you have access to a colour printer which can print double sided, you may wish to download this printable version and assemble the magazine yourself.
Thanks to Mickie Quick for digital wrangling on this edition.