Master Project

Candida Pestana

Coffee Talks


25 May–31 August 2012
Perla Moda Zürich

André Catalão, Cornelia Heusser, Susana Pedrosa, Niklaus Rüegg and Ariel Zumstein

Coffee Talks is a project that aims to open up a discussion about the state of arts in public space. The intention is to seize the opportunity to create temporary interventions in the urban landscape of the cities. The project was trying to understand Zurich as a fragmented space composed of collages, overlaps, and flows, and to apprehend it’s dynamics by means of critical analysis of the urban public space as a factor constitutive for such a dynamics.

The artists that collaborated were André Catalão, Cornelia Heusser, Susana Pedrosa, Niklaus Rüegg and Ariel Zumstein. The resulting work manifested itself publicly in a series of events: performances in public space in Zurich, an exhibition, and a symposium about Art in Public Space at Perla-Mode: message salon in Zurich.

As site-specific and event-driven project, Coffee Talks addresses multiple audiences, shakes up the city dynamics by occupying and creating small-scale events in the public domain, and opens up the possibilities for sharing the vision behind those events, specifically through performative actions, with anyone who takes part. The research permitted integration in the artistic and public context, thus creating a natural platform for dialogue concerning aforementioned issues.