Image: Bitter Melon Intervention, Topside Agricultural Fair, Massachusetts, 2006.

National Bitter Melon Council Boston, USA

Hiroko Kikuchi and Andi Sutton

Presented by Western Front
Curated by Natalie Loveless
Western Front, 303 east 8th Ave. http://www.front.bc.ca

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19

1-5 PM

Location: Site-specific in Chinatown

The National Bitter Melon Council explores the idea of participation in social structure as both a performance practice and research by creating a typical agricultural product promoting entity, e.g. the National Dairy Council, in an unlikely setting and for a unlikely fruit, i.e. Bitter Melon (Momordica charantia). The Council was originally created as part
of a year-long, site-specific social performance and research art project that consists of a series of performance interventions and performance-based research projects, which closely observe and examine with an emphasis on creating emotional, conceptual and physical bridges. The project echoes artistic movements, forms, and interventions from the last 50 years combined with recent technology. The project is built based upon ideas of audience (community participation), relationship, communication, and political intention. This project is constructed with collective narratives and examines what social performance art means. For this program the National Bitter Melon Council will bring their Seed Bomb patrol to Vancouver’s Chinatown.

The National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC) is an organization run by an artist collective that is devoted to the cultivation of a vibrant, diverse community through the promotion and distribution of Bitter Melon. Supporting the use of Bitter Melon for its myriad health benefits and culinary possibilities, the NBMC celebrates this underappreciated vegetable through creative and stimulating food-focused projects instigating situations that, through bitterness, create an alternative basis for community.

http://www.bittermelon.org