THE TEA PAVILION – DICTIONARY IN PUBLIC 

First Kochi Muziris Biennale

February 24 - March 17, 2013

an artistic project by Dorothee Albrecht

In these times of worldwide transformations a pavilion seems to provide an adequate space for investigating new potentialities: Flexible enough to react to the shifting needs at a certain location, it is also movable and can be unfolded at further places in different parts of the world.

The Tea Pavilion opens an oscillating field of research linking very different approaches together comparable to the subject “tea” with its manifold connections to thousands years old tea culture, colonial history and everyday practice of drinking a nice cup of tea. At the Guangzhou Triennial 2008 the relational frame of the Tea Pavilion was stretched from Guangzhou, as an immediate environment, to projects concerned with the production of space in different parts of the world. The Tea Pavilion at the Sao Paulo Biennial 2010 focused on Art Spaces in Times of Global Crisis – Starting from Ramallah and Tel Aviv, Starting from Dakar and Starting from Sao Paulo. 

At the Kochi Muziris Biennale the Tea Pavilion - Dictionary in Public concentrates on the local tea cultivation and tea culture in times of global change. Itʻs a space for collecting and remapping ideas, concepts, models, terms, projects, kits and modes of acting. Itʻs a space for developing other ways of creating orders combining different artistic approaches and materials, like photos, text clippings, videos, drawings, simple furniture and flexible architectural elements. In contrast to rigid and violent forms of global contestation or deadlocked ideologies, the Tea Pavilion relies on everyday praxis of exchange and conversation like drinking tea. 

At the Kochi Muziris Biennale, the Tea Pavilion explores the culture of tea cultivation as well as the tea habits of Kerala. Photographs, videos and associated materials collected from different areas and tea shops at Fort Kochi unfold the politics of space and large culture of tea – the popular drink in Kerala. 

The Tea Pavilion - Dictionary in Public is a collaboration of Dorothee Albrecht, Vipin Dhanurdharan, Sajan Mani, Edwin David Sam, Sangeeth Thali, Aparna S. Ayyanad, Sithara Sasi, Anush Lewis, and Devan N Bane, Jinna C.Y, Nielesh K C Viswakarma, Sandeep Baburao More, Unni Krishnan. S 

The Tea Pavilion - Dictionary in Public is supported by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, ifa) 

Thank you Sangeeth Thali for some of the photos.