HOT TEA
HOT TEA was a mobile service bicycle-driven cart that hosted a series of mini-events throughout the neighborhood of North Chinatown, Philadelphia throughout 2013 as part of the Asian Arts Initiative’s Social Practice Lab. As an artist-in-residence for this program, I collaborated with three artists (Laura Deutch, Katya Gorker, and Lee Tusman) to activate underutilized spaces in the neighborhood, bring attention to needed services, and create a gathering place for exchange among neighborhood residents and workers.
We received a Pearl St. Micro-Grant from the Asian Arts Initiative in the Summer and Fall of 2015 to create a project related to the Pearl Street Alleyway, located just behind Asian Arts Initiative. For this effort, we created and took our tea trike to different areas in the Chinatown North neighborhood and spoke to people about their sense of belonging in the neighborhood, asking about their origins and personal history.
We recorded and transcribed many of these conversations, and shared the texts with other visitors to the cart, who read them aloud. We then recorded “moving portraits” to layer over the audio, paired with audio read by another individual. The result is a melange of voices and portraits of the people of Chinatown North, who share many common feelings and thoughts related to their sense of home. September 2012 - September 2014.
The book created about the project by collaborator Katya Gorker can be seen here.
