• The Detox Tea Bar
  • The Detox Tea Bar
  • The Detox Tea Bar
  • The Detox Tea Bar
  • The Detox Tea Bar
  • The Detox Tea Bar 8
  • 2010 Alt_Cph in space

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Galleria Huuto participated Alt_Cph10 in Space, Copenhagen’s alternative art fair in Denmark.

Huuto presented a project ”The Detox Tea Bar” by artists Olli Keränen, Maija Luutonen, Antti Leppänen, Kati Ruohomäki and Andreas Walden.

Is this shirt ugly in the right way, or beautiful in the wrong? Is that guy good to me in the wrong way or bad to me in the right? Is that maybe what I want? Am I playing on the right side of the fence? Which one is the right side anyway (and do I really want to be there)?

Alt_Cph will be the first time we’re working together. We’re running a tea bar for the duration of the fair. Our tea bar specializes in detoxing tea varieties. This joint venture is a way for us to respond to the specifics of the fair; the socio-economic changes occurring in the area and the theme of self-organization.

The Detox Tea Bar is an in-between place where ideas of small, family-run bakeries go hand-in-hand with chain-stores specializing in organic products, where radical thoughts of social transformation define the latest trends in home furnishings. In brief, it’s a place where thoughts on gentrification merge into one unclear bundle and right and wrong are indiscernible. It’s an Apple Store that sells both fruits and computers.

Physiocrats taught that it is the self-interest of individuals or groups of individuals that moves the economy. They also believed that wealth comes solely from the value of land by means of agriculture or development. Mercantilists wanted government to be protectionists when it comes to trade by applying tariffs or subsidies that encourages exports but discourages imports. Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus argued that at the rate the population was growing, mankind was doomed to living at near-starvation level. He proposed sexual restraint and birth control to handle the situation.

The bar is open for business and under development simultaneously. We are free to make fast changes on the go, prices will fluctuate and the interior might have a different colour tomorrow.
We’re working together without a strict business plan. We are not in it for the money.

I used to say I always do my own stunts. Now this is pure reality. Look ma, no hands. What is reality? Is it the impossibly strange and strong light coming in through the window on a Wednesday morning? Or is it the sun itself that is the real truth? Look at me and then look at yourself. Equal it is said, but far from done, lived. Be gracious.