Sifting the Inner Belt 篩羅內環 Tamizando el Cinturón Interno: Bitter Melon Week

Artists and Authors

catherine D'Ignazio a.k.a. kanarinka
New media artist interested in collaboration, community and public space.

Contact Info:
144 Moody Street
Building 4, 4th Floor
Waltham, MA 02453
phone: (617)501-2441
email: [email protected]
Hiroko Kikuchi
A performance and public artist. Originally from Tokyo, Japan. Her work explores the formative and communicative meaning of everyday activities as a mutual "language," influenced by the social environment, tradition, and aesthetics which all co-exist within confining behavioral structures. For the last 2 years, she has been working on creating a protocol to address social and cultural matters by re-structuring the concept and form of performance art.

Contact Info:
57 Boylston St. #3 Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
phone: (617)905-6323
email: [email protected]
Jeremy Chan Peng Chu
Singapore born, artist and photographer, explores cultural space production in-between the processes of change, interested in Chinese diasporal space and collaborative practice.

54 Clarendon Street Level 1
Boston MA 02116
phone: (617) 375 6399
email: [email protected]
Jeremy Chi-Ming Liu
Director of Community Programs at the Asian Community Develpment Corporation, public artist, activist

57 Boylston St. #3
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
fax: (617) 482-3056
email: [email protected]
Kim Szeto
Student at Wheaton College (Norton, MA) pursuing a self designed major in Environmental Studies.

cell: 617-957-5087
email: [email protected]
Natalie Loveless
artist, critic and theorist interested in dialogic space, performance practice, critical and cultural theory.

Contact Info:
History of Consciousness Ph.D. Program
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
phone: (617) 549-3239
email: [email protected]
William H. Ho
Community Organizer and photographer interested in how urban spaces affect and interact with the public

Asian Community Development Corp.
888 Washington St., Suite 102
Boston, MA 02111
phone: 617-953-1288
fax: 617-482-3056
email: [email protected]

What is Bitter Melon Week?

Bitter Melon Week, from July 22 – 30, 2005, invites all the restaurants and food businesses in the South End neighborhood to participate by creating and serving a dish using the featured, locally-grown vegetable – Bitter Melon. Bitter Melon Week is a performance art and community-building event that engages South End residents and visitors in culinary contemplation of the community’s cultural development by eating in the area’s numerous restaurants. During Bitter Melon Week, restauranteaurs and community members alike will go to each participating restaurant, try the dish, collect its recipe card, and go to the exhibition space at the Mills Gallery to assemble the collected cards into a book.

Bitter Melon Week, sponsored by the National Bitter Melon Council, is part of the broader public art project Sifting the Inner Belt. Developed by a group of artists, activists and community members, Sifting aims to closely observe and examine, i.e. “to sift,” the South End neighborhood with an emphasis on creating emotional, conceptual and physical bridges between the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) and the Berkeley Street Community Garden (BSCG). Sifting the Inner Belt is supported and sponsored by local neighborhood residents, the LEF Foundation, and the Boston Center for the Arts.

Why Bitter? Why Bitter Melon?

Bitter Melon Week explores the idea of community and how community can be created through difference and foreignness. Bitter Melon (Momordica charantia), also known as balsam pear, balsamina (Spanish), ku gua or foo gwa (Chinese), and assorossie (French), is a truly unique and bitter ingredient that is not yet well known in the United States. It is a curious and interesting vegetable that deserves creative attention.

Bitter compounds evolved in plants as a mechanism to deter consumption by animals. Humans are the only mammals to have developed a palate or taste for bitterness. Bitterness defines our humanity.

Although grown in large quantitities in the South End, Bitter Melon is likely to be unfamiliar to most, if not all of the restaurants in the South End. Inviting every eating establishment (and by every, we really DO mean every single one!) to incorporate Bitter Melon into their cuisine, this universally new flavor will instigate a moment of unity across local cultures and cuisines. Unity through bitterness!

Incorporating dishes using Bitter Melon will be a novel experience for everyone – chefs, restaurant staff, and restaurant patrons alike. The process of creating a new dish with Bitter Melon, and serving it to guests, will be a mechanism for the entire community to come together through one shared experience – that of difference. In this way, Bitter Melon highlights this similarity and establishes a basis for community. Please see the “Bitter Melon Fact Sheet” to learn more about Bitter Melon.

Why Bitter Melon Week?

Bitter Melon Week is not a competition to find out who can make the best Bitter Melon dish. It is a social, community-building collaboration manifested through participatory acts by all the individuals who visit restaurants and food businesses in South End. We are thrilled to be creating this event and are seeking as broad involvement as possible among the restaurants and food businesses in the South End. We want to involve the “destination dining” restaurants around the BCA as well as the neighborhood pizza joints scattered throughout the South End; we want the Dominican and Puerto Rican restaurants to join us as well as the various bakeries and cafes.

Not only does Bitter Melon Week provide a week for the community to taste the flavors created by South End restaurants, but the event re-defines the community artistically and metaphorically. One cannot speak about the South End without talking about the fascinating culture of food businesses, and this project observes and celebrates the neighborhood from a variety of perspectives. As a food festival, Bitter Melon Week will support all participating local businesses. As a public art event, these businesses are also contributing creative partners!

Bitter Melon Week is a stimulating opportunity for restaurants to participate in creating a performance art event simply be doing what you do best - creating and serving delicious and satisfying food. Bitter Melon Week will draw additional restaurant patrons to neighborhood restaurants through the marketing effort of the organizers which will promote participating restaurants in media and outreach materials, including media sponsorship by the Weekly Dig and other press recognition.

We hope you’ll join us!

We believe in the accumulation of simple acts and gestures that create a sense of community. The entire culinary experience is imbued with cultural significance. As we all know, food and dining can bring people together within and across cultures and create a sense of community and belonging. New paradigm public art, as Lucy Lippard – a contemporary art and cultural critic – writes, is about “laying out the ingredients but still looking for the recipe.” We believe that the community members in and around the Berkeley Street Community Garden, the Boston Center for the Arts, and the South End will create a variety of recipes in order to find the ways to taste the real, rich, and rewarding flavors of the community itself. Our intervention – Bitter Melon Week – will lay out the evidence and materials of our work for people in the neighborhood to weave into one thread.

Photo Albums