Put Your Bitterness By
A National Bitter Melon Council Performance and Public Intervention, 2011
International Pickling Day Festival, Lower East Side, New York, NY
A table was installed with a make-your-own pickling brine station with vinegar, salt, sugar, and a variety of medicinal herbs whose ethno-medical uses included everything from calming effects (lavender & mint), to aphrodisiacs (clove), to anti-inflammatories (Mullein), to energizing or heat-inducing results (cayenne pepper), and more. We invited participants to write down a bitter feeling or bitter memory and create a corresponding brine that would, with the help of the herb mixtures, either calm or enhance the bitter emotions. We also asked participants to contribute to a collectively produced “Mixed Pickle”; they could add their bitter emotions to an extra bitter, medium bitter, or sweet pickle brine to let them stew, ferment, and ultimately dissipate together.
In this project, the NBMC was interested in this process of taking something fresh, preserving it, and saving it for later, specifically when it comes to bitter emotions. Food items, when pickled, go through a transformation process as the flavors of the brine mingle with their own; colors change, textures shift, and the comingling of preserving agents create an entirely different experience than that of the originating ingredients. The thing that makes this flavor transformation possible is time. In inviting people to pickle their bitternesses, we were providing an opportunity to name, share, temper, preserve the emotion, and put it away for awhile to see how its particular flavor might change. Would it dissipate when put in a sweeter brine like an idea might when illuminated under a sweeter light?
