In 2019, after one of our performances, the director of the Concertgebouw invited us to talk. We said yes to a coffee, on one condition: that the Concertgebouw end its sponsorship by Shell. Then we went to the café of the Concertgebouw, and waited.

Waiting for Simon is the record of that month-long art intervention in December 2019, conceived and organised by Frida Paes Leão. Every day someone from our group sat down in the café, photographed their coffee with a small camera, and posted the picture on Facebook with a message to the director: where is the coffee you promised us? We are here, waiting. As the weeks passed and no coffee came, the messages grew sharper, and the last ones announced that we would come back with a full house. Soon after, Shell and the Concertgebouw parted ways.

The book plays with the idea of the coffee table book: a handsome volume of photographs about the simple and stubborn act of waiting. Stefan Plug, invited to write alongside the images, weaves coffee, waiting, lobbying and colonial power into a piece of prose on how the fossil fuel industry settles into our cultural institutions. With an introduction by Chihiro Geuzebroek. Designed by Jessica Kuhn and printed in Amsterdam, in a limited edition.

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