Elham Puriya Mehr will be hosted by Garp Sessions in Babakale, Çanakkale, from June 16–23, 2026. During her curatorial research residency, she developed her ongoing curatorial research  The Third Space: The Affective Atmosphere of Coffeehouses.

Her residency will also be part of the research toward a co-curated project with Deniz Kirkali, one of the co-founders and co-directors of Garp Sessions, exploring the relational dynamics of alternative forms of knowledge-making, foregrounding distance not as a barrier to connection but as a generative condition for being-together.

We are happy to have her present Coffeehouses’ Potentialities on June 20, an event that brings her research into conversation with the collective environment of Garp Sessions. Through conversations, collective thinking, shared meals, and encounters with participants and the local context of Babakale, the residency explores the coffeehouse as a social and affective space where knowledge, memory, and relationships are produced through informal forms of gathering and exchange.

Through the event, Puriya Mehr will share her research and curatorial practice with the local audience, opening a conversation around the potential of coffeehouses as alternative spaces for collective knowledge-making, encounter, and being-together.