_{Photography: Nicolas Wefers}


The cultural fault zones of the twentieth century have inspired China's petit bourgeois intelligentsia to revitalize antique tradition such as tea ceremony. The collective will of society has synthesized made-up traditions and avant-garde aesthetics into a new ideology. In the realm of aesthetics, a diverse spectrum has emerged in new Chinese tea culture, ranging from minimalistic to highly decorative. However we can safely claim that the majority of tea drinkers seem to gravitate toward a rather minimalist ideology of tea drinking. In tea rituals, we often see things arranged in a pleasing geometric order, almost resembling a minimalist artwork where form, shape, material, color, and production processes are reduced to the bare minimum. The minimalists’ way of presenting themselves and their artworks without fabulation is strangely similar to the philosophy of contemporary tea drinkers: intended to strip off all ornamentation and aim to produce art that represents nothing more than what it truly is—no fluff, no extras, come to mind. Instead of manipulating the form and context of the artwork, the tea ceremony host manipulates the utensils, location, clothes, as well as bodily movements, and conversation. Simultaneously similar to stringent puritan Christian dogma, the aesthetic and ethics of tea rituals are also executed in strictly disciplined austerity.



In her first public sound live performance: Dripsody, Ming Yuan intertwines the ethos of Minimalist, puritan Christians and Buddhist spirituality. Using the form of Chinese tea ceremony, live recording and digital sound, she discloses a sonic and visual journey of tea.






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