The Little Tea Room called The World is an act of drinking tea to connect Germany and Japan. It is a project about distance and communication. The Little Tea Room called The World is ephemeral like music.

Program:

The Story

Dr. Lando Lotter, the former director of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Würzburg, asks: What do German soldiers in Japanese prison camps more than 100 years ago, and Franz von Siebold’s „great love“ for Japan about 200 years ago have in common? He is telling us a true story about the cultural exchange between victorious Japanese soldiers and German prisoners-of-war during World War I.
The Little Tea Room called The World wants to refresh the memory of this historical cross over.

The Sound

Kenzo Onoda performs the piece „I Am Sitting in a Room“ (1969) by Alvin Lucier. Luciers composition is an art work that examines the idea of multiple transformations. 
„A completely different phenomenon emerges after a series of transformations. Or is it the essence of the origin? How do we ourselves who perceive the piece have a way of accepting change?“ (Kenzo Onoda, Maebashi)

The Tea / The Vessel

Dunja Evers and Thomas Mass from basedonart Gallery (boa) show examples of tea bowls out of their collection of antique and new vessels from Japan. They talk about the deeply rooted culture around the tea in Asia and how they experienced it as german artists.

The event

Physically The Little Tea Room called The World takes place in a garden pavilion in Düsseldorf Gerresheim. Our host is Brigitte Krieger. The little house out of empty bottle crates is a sculpture by the artists Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt. 

During The Little Tea Room called The World some of us are sitting inside the pavilion. Inside means also outside, because the pavilion is completely air permeable. The ceremony will is held in english as a Zoom Conference with participants in Düsseldorf, Würzburg, Berlin, Kiel in Germany and Maebashi and Tokyo in Japan. It happens on Sunday, the 13th of June, 2021.