»TEA PAVILION, FRANKFURTER TOR« OSCILLATING TRUTHS – PEACE, EXILE, REVOLUTION

»TEA PAVILION, FRANKFURTER TOR« by Berlin-based artist Dorothee Albrecht connects historical and contemporary moments surrounding Frankfurter Tor with broader questions of peace, exile, and revolution. The result is a text-image-video assemblage — a kind of dictionary in space, a place that can be used and that also invites visitors to drink tea. The artistic project »TEA PAVILION« was first realized for the Guangzhou Triennial 2008, which was concerned with a re-examination of postcolonial conditions.

Tea as a drink and as a metaphor mediates between a thousand-year-old tea culture, colonial history, and the socializing cup of tea drunk at ease in civil spaces. Differences and commonalities are brought into a field of tension, while the shifting perspectives that are adopted cause the space of the »TEA PAVILION« to be continually questioned and produced anew. In times of worldwide change, a pavilion presents itself as an apt space of possibility: flexible and mobile enough to respond to the shifting needs of a place.

Interview with Dorothee Albrecht