The National Bitter Melon Council

NBMC projects, events, and festivals celebrate the health, social, culinary, and creative possibilities of this underappreciated vegetable. Using the format of an agricultural product promotional council in an unlikely setting (the cities of Boston, San Francisco, and Tokyo) and for an unlikely product (Bitter Melon, the most bitter of all edible vegetables), our projects use the foreignness of Bitter Melon, the concept of the flavor that is also an emotion, to instigate situations that, through bitterness, create an alternative basis for community.

Our events apply corporate marketing models and grassroots organizing strategies within our social performance interventions. We have built a persona that blurs the line between the “real” and the “not real” – we look and act like an operating promotional council but our works expose these very actions as a masquerade, used instead to foster alternative social interaction and promote cross-community dialogue.

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