A proposal to the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2012 Proposal by: The National Bitter Melon Council Web Site: http://www.bittermelon.org Contact: Andi Sutton P: 857-928-4196 E: andi.sutton@gmail.com
Out of love for flavor and the desire to bring to light Bitter Melonism’s multiple applications to the complexity of the human condition and potential for solidarity in response to the heaviness of spirit we carry in this (and so many other) historical moment(s), the following propositions will be discussed at the Berlin Biennale under the presidency of the National Bitter Melon Council, Master of Bitter Melon and Bitterness Promotion and Community Building and Representation therein of its use as a culinary, creative, and cultivative medium.
In response to the call for submissions for the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, the National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC), a collective based in Boston, MA, and Oakland, CA, proposes “Argumentation of the National Bitter Melon Council on the Power and Efficacy of Bitter Melonism” -- a public, participatory project that invites people to performatively plant the seeds for revolutionary reformation of bitterness in Berlin.
The crux of the project is the National Bitter Melon Council’s 95 theses of Bitter Melonism, a collection of statements listing the myriad commoditative, cultivative, communitative, and creative applications of Bitter Melon – in word, thought, and deed – to build community. We will use these 95 theses, translated into German, English, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Polish, Kurdish,Vietnamese, Serbo-Croatian, Greek – indeed, all languages of peoples living in and around Berlin per the demographics statistics for the city. In a public, performative action - and with the collaboration of members of the public – together we will nail copies of these theses to bitter sites (in public and private) identified by participating members of the public.
Thesis #6: This world cannot be understood through sweetness alone, i.e. embracing of only all that is pleasing and easy on the (mental, emotional, physical) palette.
The piece will begin with a public discussion:“Berlin-based Bitterness.” It will be in the style of a town hall -1 - meeting, a historically American cultural form of community activism where everybody in a community is invited to a public meetinghouse to voice their opinions and hear responses from public figures and elected officials about shared subjects of interest. In this case, participants will be invited to discuss their experiences of bitter- ness in the city of Berlin. We will invite and people who are involved in city planning and politics to join mem- bers of the public in this large group discussion. Facilitated by the NBMC with an over-sized Bitter Melon gavel, participants will share with each other all types of bitternesses – from personal, to public, to political.
Thesis #24: The feeling of bitterness, therefore, continues so long as loss and attachment continue [together]; for this is the true foundation of bitterness, and continues as a condition of our complex existence as human beings.
The crux of the conversation will be our collective investigation into how participants’ diverse bitternesses are mapped onto, reflected within, and structured around the city landscape of Berlin. We will have a wall-sized map of Berlin there, and will invite everyone who shares a bitter story or bitter site to mark it on the map. All of the myriad stories and sites will be collected, and participants will be invited to join us for the second phase of the project: “Hammering Out our Bitternesses”. This is a performative city tour, where we will visit each side and invite the individuals who marked bitter sites on the map to nail a copy of the 95 theses of Bitter Melonism to their location using a bronze-cast Bitter Melon as a hammer.
Thesis #43: The Bitter Melon cannot create instant community in its own right. However, in its very form (ugly, warty, bitter, “ethnic”, medicinal, “other”) it has proven itself to be a most effective community-building tool when used in the spirit of wonder, curiosity, and community-mindedness.
Indoors or outdoors, public or private, bitter in flavor or emotion, the document will be secured only as much as the Bitter Melon hammer allows the nail to penetrate – and the document will be left there to hang until it disappears into the landscape, blown by the wind, removed by authorities, contributed to by graffiti artists, or taken by an interested passer-by. A second wall-sized map with these bitter sites will be housed in the main gallery location of the Biennale, with instructions for viewers to add their own bitter locations to those collected at the town hall meeting. A copy of the theses will be included in the main gallery location of the Biennale with a 2-channel video installation of the town hall meeting and the hammering-focused city tour. The used Bitter Melon hammer will be displayed alongside the installation and we will include copies of the maps for exhibition visitors to take away for reference as they use it to make their ownTour of Bitterness around Berlin.
Thesis #57: Community is not a given, in its own right and among simi- larly (minded, cultured, created, perceived) individuals. It must needs be cultivated, and the framework from which it is created can be just as equally taste or dis-taste, similarity or difference, familiarity or foreignness.
This project documents neighborhood emotions literally and conceptually. It encourages the community to express their bitter emotions vis a vis a violent/cathartic/historically referent gesture (hammering a political document to/in public space) and a revolutionary spirit (the manifesto-type treatise on Bitter Melonism). Like the Fluxus process of using a simple instruction to create a subjective, performance-based artwork/experience, our project - a map of the urban landscape, a discussion, a performance - engages the public in an encounter with the city via the common thread that is ‘bitterness’, countering and perhaps rupturing that bitterness with an act of defiance and an act of possibility. The collectiveness of the action symbolically and literally joins Berlin residents and Biennale participants. It is a form of urban homeopathy, a process we have used in other projects such as Bitter Melon Homeopathy for Urban Renewal (Boston, 2007), a seed bomb based project that resulted in beautifying Bitter Melon gardens in bitter public spaces and A Salt Apology (San Francisco, 2008), group-based salting of public space (i.e. curing or reducing the bitterness of) in a gentrifying neighborhood. Pursuing the paradoxical notion of homeopathy – where an illness is cured by small doses of the toxifying agent - is an act of resistance, healing, and inquiry.
Thesis #74: Therefore, Bitter Melon, through its very (dis)taste; it’s hyper- localism that is foreign-read, cultivates community based on difference. Cel- ebrated foreignness, collective unknown – curiosity and openness grounded in visual and palette-driven (dis)taste.
“Argumentation of the National Bitter Melon Council on the Power and Efficacy of Bitter Melonism” calls attention to the shifting emotional landscape of the city informed by this historical moment, one of changing demographics, community and cultural balances, privatization, conflict (local and global) and the diverse invisible and unmet agendas that accompany this process.Through bitterness, it creates access to unnoticed spaces where the roots of the bitter emotions exist for those who are both familiar and unfamiliar to individual sites’ and neighborhoods’ contexts, learning from and perhaps healing through the hammer-based demarcation. The gesture of bitterness - hammering - is the rallying force. The analysis of Bitter Melonism – the theses – are the residual markings and the revolutionary seeds.
A proposal to the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2012 Proposal by: The National Bitter Melon Council Web Site: http://www.bittermelon.org Contact: Andi Sutton P: 857-928-4196 E: andi.sutton@gmail.com
Out of love for flavor and the desire to bring to light Bitter Melonism’s multiple applications to the complexity of the human condition and potential for solidarity in response to the heaviness of spirit we carry in this (and so many other) historical moment(s), the following propositions will be discussed at the Berlin Biennale under the presidency of the National Bitter Melon Council, Master of Bitter Melon and Bitterness Promotion and Community Building and Representation therein of its use as a culinary, creative, and cultivative medium.
In response to the call for submissions for the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, the National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC), a collective based in Boston, MA, and Oakland, CA, proposes “Argumentation of the National Bitter Melon Council on the Power and Efficacy of Bitter Melonism” -- a public, participatory project that invites people to performatively plant the seeds for revolutionary reformation of bitterness in Berlin.
The crux of the project is the National Bitter Melon Council’s 95 theses of Bitter Melonism, a collection of statements listing the myriad commoditative, cultivative, communitative, and creative applications of Bitter Melon – in word, thought, and deed – to build community. We will use these 95 theses, translated into German, English, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Polish, Kurdish,Vietnamese, Serbo-Croatian, Greek – indeed, all languages of peoples living in and around Berlin per the demographics statistics for the city. In a public, performative action - and with the collaboration of members of the public – together we will nail copies of these theses to bitter sites (in public and private) identified by participating members of the public.
Thesis #6: This world cannot be understood through sweetness alone, i.e. embracing of only all that is pleasing and easy on the (mental, emotional, physical) palette.
The piece will begin with a public discussion:“Berlin-based Bitterness.” It will be in the style of a town hall -1 - meeting, a historically American cultural form of community activism where everybody in a community is invited to a public meetinghouse to voice their opinions and hear responses from public figures and elected officials about shared subjects of interest. In this case, participants will be invited to discuss their experiences of bitter- ness in the city of Berlin. We will invite and people who are involved in city planning and politics to join mem- bers of the public in this large group discussion. Facilitated by the NBMC with an over-sized Bitter Melon gavel, participants will share with each other all types of bitternesses – from personal, to public, to political.
Thesis #24: The feeling of bitterness, therefore, continues so long as loss and attachment continue [together]; for this is the true foundation of bitterness, and continues as a condition of our complex existence as human beings.
The crux of the conversation will be our collective investigation into how participants’ diverse bitternesses are mapped onto, reflected within, and structured around the city landscape of Berlin. We will have a wall-sized map of Berlin there, and will invite everyone who shares a bitter story or bitter site to mark it on the map. All of the myriad stories and sites will be collected, and participants will be invited to join us for the second phase of the project: “Hammering Out our Bitternesses”. This is a performative city tour, where we will visit each side and invite the individuals who marked bitter sites on the map to nail a copy of the 95 theses of Bitter Melonism to their location using a bronze-cast Bitter Melon as a hammer.
Thesis #43: The Bitter Melon cannot create instant community in its own right. However, in its very form (ugly, warty, bitter, “ethnic”, medicinal, “other”) it has proven itself to be a most effective community-building tool when used in the spirit of wonder, curiosity, and community-mindedness.
Indoors or outdoors, public or private, bitter in flavor or emotion, the document will be secured only as much as the Bitter Melon hammer allows the nail to penetrate – and the document will be left there to hang until it disappears into the landscape, blown by the wind, removed by authorities, contributed to by graffiti artists, or taken by an interested passer-by. A second wall-sized map with these bitter sites will be housed in the main gallery location of the Biennale, with instructions for viewers to add their own bitter locations to those collected at the town hall meeting. A copy of the theses will be included in the main gallery location of the Biennale with a 2-channel video installation of the town hall meeting and the hammering-focused city tour. The used Bitter Melon hammer will be displayed alongside the installation and we will include copies of the maps for exhibition visitors to take away for reference as they use it to make their ownTour of Bitterness around Berlin.
Thesis #57: Community is not a given, in its own right and among simi- larly (minded, cultured, created, perceived) individuals. It must needs be cultivated, and the framework from which it is created can be just as equally taste or dis-taste, similarity or difference, familiarity or foreignness.
This project documents neighborhood emotions literally and conceptually. It encourages the community to express their bitter emotions vis a vis a violent/cathartic/historically referent gesture (hammering a political document to/in public space) and a revolutionary spirit (the manifesto-type treatise on Bitter Melonism). Like the Fluxus process of using a simple instruction to create a subjective, performance-based artwork/experience, our project - a map of the urban landscape, a discussion, a performance - engages the public in an encounter with the city via the common thread that is ‘bitterness’, countering and perhaps rupturing that bitterness with an act of defiance and an act of possibility. The collectiveness of the action symbolically and literally joins Berlin residents and Biennale participants. It is a form of urban homeopathy, a process we have used in other projects such as Bitter Melon Homeopathy for Urban Renewal (Boston, 2007), a seed bomb based project that resulted in beautifying Bitter Melon gardens in bitter public spaces and A Salt Apology (San Francisco, 2008), group-based salting of public space (i.e. curing or reducing the bitterness of) in a gentrifying neighborhood. Pursuing the paradoxical notion of homeopathy – where an illness is cured by small doses of the toxifying agent - is an act of resistance, healing, and inquiry.
Thesis #74: Therefore, Bitter Melon, through its very (dis)taste; it’s hyper- localism that is foreign-read, cultivates community based on difference. Cel- ebrated foreignness, collective unknown – curiosity and openness grounded in visual and palette-driven (dis)taste.
“Argumentation of the National Bitter Melon Council on the Power and Efficacy of Bitter Melonism” calls attention to the shifting emotional landscape of the city informed by this historical moment, one of changing demographics, community and cultural balances, privatization, conflict (local and global) and the diverse invisible and unmet agendas that accompany this process.Through bitterness, it creates access to unnoticed spaces where the roots of the bitter emotions exist for those who are both familiar and unfamiliar to individual sites’ and neighborhoods’ contexts, learning from and perhaps healing through the hammer-based demarcation. The gesture of bitterness - hammering - is the rallying force. The analysis of Bitter Melonism – the theses – are the residual markings and the revolutionary seeds.