My name is Betty, and I am a Japanese Tea Ceremony practitioner under the Urasenke School of Tea in London, United Kingdom. In parallel with my practice, I am also an avid researcher, making links with the present moment with items from the past.

On Tea and Time is a research and performative project that aims to reinstate the drifting minds back into the present moment. This project utilises the art and principles of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, Chanoyu, as a method to interact and appreciate the immediate space. Exploring time through the ritualised preparation of tea and the performing body, a conscious vessel of knowledge and a permanent part of one's perceptual field. Through the elaborative choreography, the performance becomes a therapeutic method that tends to the woes and worries derived from the chaos of the metropolis.

The research and performance stem from the philosophical perspective of relativity in Zen and Taoism but adopt the Western ideology of the cyclical, thick time. Deriving from these perspectives, the project references and analyses art history around the theme of tea—antiques, woodblock prints and photographs—which continues to explore the materiality of time and how it overlaps and connects.

On Tea and Time further explores the ephemerality of performance and the effect of documentation on its ontological value. Reaching a middle ground with the representation in the form of a film becomes an intermedia that combines art-media with life-media.