Screenshot from the video: “The Third Space: The Affective Atmosphere of Coffeehouses” by Elham Puriya Mehr, 2023.
We cordially invite you to Coffeehouse Lab: Conviviality, the third event in a series designed to accompany the residency project. This event is an informal gathering and discussion which will take place on January 28th at Delany's Coffeehouse, one of Vancouver’s oldest historic coffeehouses at 105 Denman St, Vancouver, BC (www.delanyscoffee.com). The purpose of the gathering is to both experience and explore together, the potentiality of these social spaces in shaping the future of learning, considering coffee as an agency that mobilizes communal awareness, collective memories, transformation, and possibly, freedom.
Together, we will engage in an informal conversation about the potentialities of cultural workers in the context of extreme conditions. The talk will feature speakers Lisa Baldissera, Director of Griffin Art Projects, Susan Gibb, Executive Director of Western Front and Tobin Gibson of Unit 17.
Elham Puriya Mehr (Iran-Canada) is an independent curator and lecturer based in Vancouver. Her research focuses on the potentiality of ‘study’ and ‘learning’ in social spaces in order to think about new vocabularies, new practices, and new knowledge beyond bodies of disciplinary inherited knowledge.
Lisa Baldissera has held prominent curatorial positions in public art galleries in Western Canada since 1999, showcasing her expertise in the contemporary art scene. Baldissera is the Director of Griffin Art Projects.
Susan Gibb is a curator who often works in long-term engagement with artists on the production of new work. Currently she is executive director of Western Front, an artist-run centre with a multidisciplinary program in Vancouver, Canada.
Tobin Gibson has worked as assistant curator at Presentation House Gallery, gallery & artist liaison at Maureen Paley, as well as associate director at The Apartment. For the last seven years, he has been operating Unit 17.
Coffeehouse culture emerged during the Safavid period in Iran in the 16th century in the city of Isfahan, pioneered significant performative methods of sharing knowledge through storytelling called Naqqāli’ as well as particular coffeehouse painting schools. Coffeehouses were places of community and friendship as well as sites to share knowledge, and ideas, and support each other. They were particularly crucial as affordable, egalitarian places which had the effect of shifting normative class structures. Years later, coffee in England was identified as a ‘sober’ drink, and the coffeehouse culture of Iran and Turkey had been seen by English travelers which encouraged Londoners to create a fantastic form of social space in London. The coffeehouses played a useful role in developing England’s greater political freedom. The polite conversation within these spaces led to the reasoned and sober debate on matters of politics, science, literature, poetry, commerce, and religion, so much so that London coffeehouses became known as ‘penny universities,’ as that was the price of a cup of coffee. While contemporary coffeehouses have forgotten these possibilities, their activities right before what Habermas named the ‘public sphere’ presented a site of challenge to hierarchical and colonial power structures that their 'study' may activate the potentiality of alternatives to failing contemporary institutional structures.
Griffin Art Projects and Elham Puriya Mehr extend our sincere thanks to Delany's Coffeehouse for generously hosting and sponsoring this event.
Elham Puriya Mehr wishes to thank Canada Council for their support of her residency project.