Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
What can a tea ceremony teach us about ocean plastic pollution? Quite a lot, as the art and research collective Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics show in this talk.
Founded in 2022 by a group of students and faculty at UCLA, the collective aims to address sustainability and oceanic plastic pollution through the cultural practice of chanoyu (commonly called “Japanese tea ceremony” in English.) Chanoyu conveys a legacy of Pacific Rim cultural exchange and migration, a tradition of integrating unlike and unusual items into a cohesive whole, and a focus on mindfulness and co-presence with others. All these characteristics can be effectively incorporated into a creative response to a pressing global concern.
Hear founding members share their diverse paths to chanoyu, the process of building a tea house from scratch, and how chanoyu’s philosophy of “creative reuse” and wabi-sabi (beautiful imperfection) can help address our plastic waste and pollution crisis.
This program is part of the online series Perspectives on Japanese Tea Practice (https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/events/event-series/perspectives-on-japanese-tea-practice/), which brings together various experts on Japanese tea practice, called chanoyu, to explore its evolution from the past into the present. Roundtable discussions and lectures with tea practitioners, collectors, curators, university professors, architects, and artists reveal how cross-cultural connections have been crucial to historic and contemporary Japanese tea practice. We created this series to complement the exhibition Reasons to Gather: Japanese Tea Practice Unwrapped (https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/events/event-series/perspectives-on-japanese-tea-practice/).
Michelle Liu Carriger is an associate professor and former chair of UCLA’s Department of Theater. As a longtime practitioner of the Japanese Way of Tea, Carriger both teaches and publishes scholarly research on tea as a practice of historical embodiment and cultural performance.
Kaoru Kuribayashi is an interdisciplinary artist who engages with traditional forms as evolving practices. She holds master’s degrees from Goldsmiths and UCLA, where she researched how Japanese culture articulates mindfulness, ritual, and transcendence in a global context.
Aldo Schwartz is a writer, artist, and filmmaker based in both California and Japan. While studying film at UCLA, he founded UTeaLA—an organization devoted to the study and practice of tea ceremony. In April 2026, he will begin graduate research as a MEXT scholar at Tokyo University of the Arts.
Hiro Chemers is an architect, designer, and M.Arch candidate in bio-integrated design at UCL Bartlett. While pursuing his BA at UCLA, Hiro served as design lead for Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics. He currently works at Carbon Based, a startup building digital tools to transform architecture and design through material-centric workflows.
About Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics ( www.plastictea.house )
Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics is a UCLA-based interdisciplinary research initiative that uses chanoyu (tea ceremony) as a lens to explore histories of East-West cultural exchange and contemporary ecological issues in the Pacific Ocean. In May 2024, they held a series of debut events at the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television, followed by pop-up performances at various galleries and organizations in Los Angeles.
What can a tea ceremony teach us about ocean plastic pollution? Quite a lot, as the art and research collective Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics show in this talk.
Founded in 2022 by a group of students and faculty at UCLA, the collective aims to address sustainability and oceanic plastic pollution through the cultural practice of chanoyu (commonly called “Japanese tea ceremony” in English.) Chanoyu conveys a legacy of Pacific Rim cultural exchange and migration, a tradition of integrating unlike and unusual items into a cohesive whole, and a focus on mindfulness and co-presence with others. All these characteristics can be effectively incorporated into a creative response to a pressing global concern.
Hear founding members share their diverse paths to chanoyu, the process of building a tea house from scratch, and how chanoyu’s philosophy of “creative reuse” and wabi-sabi (beautiful imperfection) can help address our plastic waste and pollution crisis.
This program is part of the online series Perspectives on Japanese Tea Practice (https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/events/event-series/perspectives-on-japanese-tea-practice/), which brings together various experts on Japanese tea practice, called chanoyu, to explore its evolution from the past into the present. Roundtable discussions and lectures with tea practitioners, collectors, curators, university professors, architects, and artists reveal how cross-cultural connections have been crucial to historic and contemporary Japanese tea practice. We created this series to complement the exhibition Reasons to Gather: Japanese Tea Practice Unwrapped (https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/events/event-series/perspectives-on-japanese-tea-practice/).
Michelle Liu Carriger is an associate professor and former chair of UCLA’s Department of Theater. As a longtime practitioner of the Japanese Way of Tea, Carriger both teaches and publishes scholarly research on tea as a practice of historical embodiment and cultural performance.
Kaoru Kuribayashi is an interdisciplinary artist who engages with traditional forms as evolving practices. She holds master’s degrees from Goldsmiths and UCLA, where she researched how Japanese culture articulates mindfulness, ritual, and transcendence in a global context.
Aldo Schwartz is a writer, artist, and filmmaker based in both California and Japan. While studying film at UCLA, he founded UTeaLA—an organization devoted to the study and practice of tea ceremony. In April 2026, he will begin graduate research as a MEXT scholar at Tokyo University of the Arts.
Hiro Chemers is an architect, designer, and M.Arch candidate in bio-integrated design at UCL Bartlett. While pursuing his BA at UCLA, Hiro served as design lead for Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics. He currently works at Carbon Based, a startup building digital tools to transform architecture and design through material-centric workflows.
About Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics ( www.plastictea.house )
Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics is a UCLA-based interdisciplinary research initiative that uses chanoyu (tea ceremony) as a lens to explore histories of East-West cultural exchange and contemporary ecological issues in the Pacific Ocean. In May 2024, they held a series of debut events at the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television, followed by pop-up performances at various galleries and organizations in Los Angeles.
