Introduction

The TEA PAVILION is an ambivalent space that embraces a variety of contradictory impulses. It can be used as an area of investigation. Similar to the very different connected layers of the pavilion space itself, the subject “tea” refers to very diverse aspects, moments and practices in colonial history, highly cultivated, thousand year old ceremonies and mundane moments of simple relaxation with a nice cup of tea.

The TEA PAVILION unfolds in a space between flexible architectural elements, which host material collections as connections to other theoretical, imaginative, historical and geographical fields, art works and seductive interfaces, like the offer of complimentary tea and comfortable furniture that invites one to rest.

As an analogy with Hannah Arendt's ideas about public space, the TEA PAVILION relies on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be devised. "For though the common world is the common meeting ground of all, those who are present have different locations in it, and the location of one can no more coincide with the location of another than the location of two objects. Being seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position." 1

1 Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa, Piper München Zürich, 1981, p. 71.

A project by Dorothee Albrecht, produced by the 29th Bienal de Sao Paulo