Critical Tea Theory: Gongfu Tea & Gongfu Uncles
From D.T. Suzuki’s teachings on Zen Buddhism to tea ceremony and Daoist breathwork practices, Bay area counterculture in the 1960s took inspiration from Eastern esoteric traditions, responding to a profound disillusionment with Western modernity and late-stage capitalism with a desire for rituals of connection and slowness. Zen, yoga, and other contemplative traditions became central to the countercultural turn. The romance of the East has often furnished the most radical dreams of Western civilization’s discontents.
Now, on the brink of a new set of spiritual and political crises, Chinese civilization is appearing in the zeitgeist as a political, cultural and epistemological foil. What’s with the proliferation of social media footage of Chinese aunties and uncles performing wild calisthenic feats in public parks? Why is anime cool now? Why is everyone in a “very Chinese time of their life”? And why is there such a renewed interest in tea ceremony?
Join interdisciplinary artist and critical theorist Kelsey Chen (Stanford) for an experimental lecture and tea service to consider Chinamaxxing as an expression of the search for alternative epistemologies and the disillusionment with failing American institutions, thinking alongside tea as a central figure in the story of the complicated role that China has been enlisted to play historically and in this contemporary moment in Western political critique.
⭑.ᐟ agenda
6:30 doors open
7:00 talk & tea service
7:40 onwards tea & hang
⭑.ᐟ about Kelsey
Kelsey Chen (she/her) is an interdisciplinary theorist, artist, and PhD Candidate in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. Her scholarly work has been generously supported by the ACLS, the Stanford Arts Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Stanford Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Stanford Center for Spatial & Textual Analysis, and the Pigott Fellowship. You can find her creative and critical writing--speculative fiction, experimental prose and poetry--on Qui Parle, taper, Art Review, The Advocate, and the Harvard Future Humans Anthology. Her artistic work has been supported by the Anicka Yi Studios Metaspore fellowship and exhibited at et al gallery, 120710 gallery, and Bather's Library. She is currently artist-in-residence at Now Place, an independent bookstore and press in San Francisco Chinatown.
⭑.ᐟ about TIAT
tiat is the intersection of art & technology! we are an experimental gallery for creative technologists to experiment, exhibit, and expand their practice. ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ tiat is 501c3 nonprofit, our EIN is: 39-3448606.
This event is presented alongside our latest exhibition, on Chinamaxxing.