The following tea was obtained direct from the company headquarters of KK Tea in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and imported to Newcastle Upon Tyne in the Spring of 2008 by Feral Trade.

Single estate, certified organic tea grown in northmost Bangladesh, several kilometers from the Indian border, where on a clear day you can see the Himalayas somewhere in the region of Darjeeling.

Kazi & Kazi tea, ecofarmed in the northwest border area.

After discovering KK Tea via a chance encounter in an upmarket supermarket in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, Feral Trade traveled to the crucible of its production and definition, the Tetulia tea estate in Panchagar, an overnight train and dawn van ride to the north.

The interest was to explore the truth claims, aesthetics, business plans and peripheral relationships bound up in a sample, staple grocery item. Premise that via temporary embedding in the landscape of production, it would be possible to gather traces of a broader ecology of production, social, business, aesthetics and geopoltics and return this glimpsed / gleaned /scanned experience straight to its drinkers via direct export,

Visits to the tea garden and corporate HQ took place in February 2008, gathering information and images to compile a more nuanced story than is currently visible in the company brochure or on-package. 300 bags tea plus 1kg loose leaf purchased and delivered to UK/Belgium, repackaged with complementary research findings.

Disclaimer: Although as viewed through the sometimes mystifying filter of foreign travel, ESL, translation drift, and themed corporate language it could not always be clear if the research was accurate or complete.

The research took into account the prevailing landscape

the commodity is the opposite of the commons as it conceals human relations except for the money relation, while the product of the commons is filled with human relations, although not to idealise, possibly ambiguous, conflicted or combative ones

Concrete Electricity Poles

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