T-shroom

The T-Shroom is a complex project. As in a computer game, there are many levels and when you think you are about to reach the exit, you are actually running the risk of finding yourself at a dead end Ieva Auzina Studio No16, 2001

T-Shroom is a social art project brought to the UK by the Latvian artists group Primitive and art bureau OPEN, who brought together a team of print-designers, photographers and video / new media artists to promote the symbolic values of the tea-mushroom through the use of controversial branding tools: a new, youth orientated brand-name ÐT-Shroom; eye-catching packaging; TV spots and print ads with anti-consumerism messages.

Tea-mushroom or Kombocha Ð has been a popular home-made Òsoft-drinkÓ in the Baltic states and Russia for more than a century and usually had a pet like family-status. As it couldnÕt be bought in a shop, tea-mushroom became part of the family heritage or even a long-living family member and effectively was distributed through the human network.

Ten years after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, two Latvian new media artists Peteris Kimelis and Katrina Neiburga smuggled a couple of tea-mushrooms over the border to Stockholm and announced them as East European refugees, endangered in their homeland by the invasion of global soft-drink brands like Coca-Cola. Tea-mushroom has become an extinct minority in its field, symbolising the rapid spread of the worldÕs globalisation process, as well as the increasing impact of chemical foodstuffs and industrial products in our everyday rituals.

For the month of July, IBID project space will be transformed into the distribution centre / network hub of this living organism. This project will feature elements of the fake shop first installed during Christmas 2000 in a main shopping area of Riga: the video documentary work ÒAssociation of the Tea Mushroom GrowersÓ portraying families who still have the tea-mushroom in their kitchens; interviewing their youngsters who now prefer Coca-Cola; as well as showing real examples of this tiny biochemical factory and health promoting beverage.

open.x-i.net) Primitive was set up in 2000, by two new media artists Katrine Neiburga and Peteris Kimelis, as a reaction to and critique of consumer culture and the alienation it brings to the social realm. Previously they have worked with diverse forms of media art and their work has been widely shown in Latvia, Finland, Sweden, Holland and Germany. Art Bureau OPEN has been in existence since 1994 as a collective of artists, writers and curators. In the last eight years OPEN has provided a platform for many critical voices and realised numerous art intervention projects in public and media spaces. For example: Untitled: subvertising session in streets of Riga [http://open.x-i.net/subversija/ September 2001 Ð 500 billboards displayed the work of a local and international alliance of culture jammers and communication guerrillas;Animal Farm, May 2001 Ð a project produced in collaboration with the British Council; Slide show, 2000 Ð social commentary produced by 10 commissioned artists and screened on LNT television.

Kombucha is a combination of bacteria and yeasts living together symbiotically in a matrix of mycelium-like threads. The active substances address themselves to the entire body system. It can re-establish a normal condition in the cellular membranes without any side effects and thus promotes one's well being in a natural, non-toxic manner.

T-Shroom also will visit AVEDA institute in Holborn and Floating IP space in Manchester later this year. Project is being presented in association with Visiting Arts and AmbientTV.Net

For more information please contact Ilze Black Ð black@open.x-.net / 07957 686 296 or IBID project space: Unit 4, 210 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9NQ