TEA RULES
Musician Hyeshim Jeong showed me the basics of performing a traditional tea ceremony. I asked her to change her role from classically trained musician to non-professional tea ceremony instructor. The steps for the tea ceremony were precise and not easy to learn. The absence of a common language were strongly felt as stress in proper form were essential to this art. I survived the first round by improvising and didn't try again. We talked instead about our lives in transition, shifting between roles and having to act in unfamiliar skin- "that is when we pause, drop down into ourselves and are". The shops in the market were chameleons. Like many artists who doubled as teachers, assistants, gallery administrators, etc many shops changed between store fronts and community salons. Their roles rotated out of the necessity to interact. With this intervention, I looked at the market's rotating role from provider of food to self-contained microcosm. It's ability to alter into whatever was needed to survive.