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Greetings National Bitter Melon Council friends and supporters!
We are excited to announce our new project, A Salt Apology, that we will be presenting at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at the end of the month as a part of their upcoming show: The Gatherers: Greening our Urban Spheres.
A Salt Apology, our 2008 New Product Initiative, adds salt to bitterness as our most recent urban homeopathy remedy, a project produced in collaboration with the South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) and ENACT Youth Committee. On Sunday, 11/2, we will be leading a procession through the South of Market neighborhood, identifying "bitter places," or sites that are associated with bitter memories for the neighborhood community members and visitors. We will mark these sites by salting them with hand-made shakers created by the NBMC, SOMCAN, ENACT, and others as a form of ritual purification -- a homeopathic healing remedy.
Please join us for the opening celebration on Thursday, Oct. 30th, from 6-9 PM and for our public performance on Sunday, 11/2, at 2 PM. For more information, contact Andi Sutton at nationalbittermeloncouncil@gmail.com.
Complete press release is attached and also included in plain text below.
If you are in town, we hope to see you there!
Andi Sutton
Director of Public Relations
NBMC
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YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS SHOWCASES ARTISTS/ACTIVISTS
INSPIRING SOCIAL, AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS WITH
THE GATHERERS: GREENING OUR URBAN SPHERES
OCT 31, 2008–JAN 11, 2009
A series of interactive community events are planned with the art collectives Fallen Fruit, Rebar, Public Matters and National Bitter Melon Council
The Gatherers Opening Night Party: Thurs, Oct 30, 6–9 pm
$8 in Advance, $10 at the Door
Public Fruit Jam with the Art Collective Fallen Fruit: Sat, Nov 1, 12–5 pm
FREE w/Gallery Admission/YBCA Members FREE
Rebar city tour with Bushwaffle (inflatable outdoor furniture): Sat, Nov 8 and Wed, Jan 7, Noon
FREE/Limited capacity
Community Conversation "What Does It Mean To Be Green?": Tue, Nov 11, 6–8 pm
FREE/Limited capacity
National Bitter Melon Council walking tour titled A Salt Apology in SoMa: Sun, Nov 2, 2 pm
FREE/Limited capacity
SAN FRANCISCO, October 6, 2008—Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) proudly presents The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres, a ground-breaking exhibition of work from a culturally diverse group of artists combining art with cultural activism to incorporate nature and agriculture into urban habitats on Oct 31, 2008–Jan 11, 2009. For The Gatherers, guest co-curators Berin Golonu and Veronica Wiman sought out a distinctive group of artists from different backgrounds and cultures who touch upon various issues: from the construction of public urban social spaces; to environmental issues affecting urban residents; to the politics of localized food production and affordable nutrition for city dwellers. Through the lens of artistic practices, their works attempt to green our urban spheres, and involve a broad range of interlinking matters, from environmental issues to urban spatial justice.
More than a showcase of work, YBCA also hosts a series of interactive public programs, urban interventions and in-gallery discussions involving the featured artists. The exhibition and its various public programs address timely questions about ensuring sustainability for growing urban populations and how we can work together, across cultures and geography, to create successful projects and initiatives that have a lasting impact. On Tue, Nov 11 from 6–8 pm, YBCA hosts a Community Conversation titled "What does it mean to be green?", which explores the complexities and contradictions around greening urban environments with artists and community leaders working at the forefront of creating a sustainable green future in business, politics, fashion, food and art (Free). In addition, at select times throughout the run of The Gatherers, the gallery will be transformed into a community center where the public can meet with the artists, environmental groups and cultural activists. Please visit www.ybca.org for a full list of programs.
"I think that the ultimate goal of the artists featured in The Gatherers is to envision conceptual and practical examples for sustainability that can inspire a broader public to take action and make a difference. These examples may have started out as utopian visions by a handful of motivated and creative individuals, but they've transcended this status and are now having a tangible transformative impact. We are thrilled to present an exciting project that will not only present information and introduce new ideas, but also connect with communities to inspire dialog and hopefully instigate broader social and environmental change," said Berin Golonu, guest co-curator of The Gatherers.
While inspired by the Bay Area's culture of environmental awareness and activism, The Gatherers brings together a group of twelve artists and artist collectives from around the world to highlight shared concerns amidst geographical and cultural differences. Artists include:
Fallen Fruit (Los Angeles)
www.fallenfruit.org
David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young formed a Los Angeles-based collective called Fallen Fruit, a project which started as a mapping of all the public fruit in their neighborhood. Stemming from the belief that fruit is a resource that should be commonly shared, like shells from the beach or mushrooms from the forest, the collective moved from mapping public fruit to planning fruit parks in under-utilized areas. Their goal is to get us to think about the life and vitality of our neighborhoods and to consider how we can change the dynamic of our cities and common values. Fallen Fruit conducts Public Jams, in which they collaborate with the citizens of different cities in communal jam-making sessions. For The Gatherers, Fallen Fruit will hold in-gallery conversations during select times to explore the history of colonization and how it has changed the food culture around the world, as well as right here in the Bay Area.
YBCA invites the community to bring fresh fruit and clean, empty glass jars to a jam making session on Sat, Nov 1 from 12–5pm in YBCA's YAAW Lounge (Free w/Gallery Admission). At the Public Fruit Jam, Fallen Fruit will also lead a discussion about the basics of jam and jelly making, pectin and bindings, the aesthetics of sweetness, as well as the communal power of shared food and the liberation of public fruit. When the jam is done, the public is invited to take the jam home, leave for others or trade with other participants.
Amy Franceschini (San Francisco) with Wilson Diaz (Cali, Colombia)
http://www.futurefarmers.com/
Artist, educator and award winning web designer Amy Franceschini applies her multimedia talents to the multidisciplinary effects of globalization and its many environmental consequences. Her approach often combines strong graphics, interactive physical and website environments, with a commitment to "long-term engagements with the public". Colombian artist Wilson Diaz has devoted his practice of late to undertaking an investigation of the Colombian government's war against the coca plant. In a desperate fight against drugs, the Colombian government has decided to eradicate the illicit crop of cocaine by attacking nature and farmers with land poisons such as Roundup Ultra. As a result, water, air and ground are contaminated with toxins and the biodiversity of flora and fauna are threatened. Diaz attempts to save, preserve and honor the coca plant through various initiatives, from collecting and distributing its seeds, to distributing manuals on how to grow and prune the plant, to documenting how his friends and neighbors in Cali tend to the plant in their gardens and flower boxes.
The National Bitter Melon Council (Boston)
http://bittermelon.org/
The National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC) is an ongoing art and community development project that applies performance art methodologies within existing social structures in creative community-based investigations. The NBMC stages events that use the foreignness of bitter melon and the concept of this flavor (that is also an emotion) of "bitter" to investigate situations that create and promote an alternative basis for community and engagement. For The Gatherers, NBMC will collaborate with the South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) for a walking tour in the South of Market neighborhood titled A Salt Apology on Sun, Nov 2 at 2 pm (Free). The tour will identify "bitter places," or sites that are associated with bitter memories for neighborhood populations, to bring attention to local populations and organizations who are being challenged by the growth and velocity of neighborhood development.
Oda Projesi (Istanbul)
http://www.odaprojesi.org/
Oda Projesi is a collective of three artists (Özge Acikkol, Günes Savas and Sccil Yersel) from Istanbul. Since 2000, Oda has been experimenting with alternative ways of finding, using and producing social space within the urban sphere. For The Gatherers, they have undertaken a study titled Please Don't Step on the Green which consists of a series of informational texts that shed light on green pockets of space in and around Istanbul, a rapidly growing, dense urban center that's home to more than 15 million people. A diversity of spaces are profiled in this city, from little gardens growing on balconies in the slums outlying the city, to organized patches of green that carpet its new gated communities.
Marjetica Potrc (Ljubljana/Berlin)
http://www.potrc.org/
The Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrc has been studying living conditions in the midst of contemporary urban expansion. Her works are about the tension between urban development and social crisis such as increasing poverty and ecological crisis, and reflect upon the geopolitical conflicts of our time of globalization. She travels around some "difficult parts" of the world such as Africa and South America to witness this new urban situation. Lately, she is working on the issue of urban agriculture as a relieving solution to the disappearance of contact between urban dwellers and nature. She creates site-specific projects around issues of urban agriculture, stating: "Future wars will be fought for water, not oil, and they will be fought in cities." The exhibition will showcase a series of drawings made by Potrc inspired by living conditions in various cities undergoing rapid growth and development, from Caracas, Venezuela, to post-Katrina New Orleans.
Public Matters (Los Angeles)
http://publicmattersgroup.com/about.htm
Public Matters is a multidisciplinary team based in Los Angeles, with expertise in public art, education, new media, community building, capacity building, and leadership development. Public Matters generates innovative, artistic, place-based projects that build creative, civic and social capital in communities. Their projects develop creative community leaders by engaging residents in the creation of media-based neighborhood narratives that illuminate its history, character and conditions and integrate the results with broader civic processes, advocacy efforts and community initiatives. Public Matters addresses social issues through long-term educational projects and establishes long-term sustainable programs that evolve beyond their initial involvement and are ultimately shaped by the community and its needs. For The Gatherers, Public Matters will be displaying documentation of their various recent neighborhood initiatives, including a video, created in collaboration with high school students in Los Angeles, investigating the proliferation of corner liquor stores in inner city neighborhoods and advocating the need for proper access to nutrition and healthy eating habits for lower income residents.
Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell (Oakland)
http://www.amityworks.org/
For two years Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell ran the project Temescal Amity Works through the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland, California. They maintained a storefront, a series of free publications, a website and a crop-sharing program called the Big Backyard. The Big Backyard was formed around a pushcart that they used to collect surplus fruit from neighborhood yards, which they gave away at their storefront or re-distributed in the form of collective preserves and marmalades. Their events and programs, such as neighborhood walks, movie screenings and thematic public meetings were intended to build upon and further this contact. One of their central concerns is to construct an aesthetic sense of communication that carries through these varied forms in a resonant and poetic manner. For The Gatherers, Purves and Cockrell have proposed a project titled The Meadow Network, which is rooted in a broad series of interviews with San Francisco residents from diverse backgrounds. Purves and Cockrell will interview urban residents about their own memories and connections to rural life. These interviews will be edited into texts and images that will be printed as a series of free newspapers displayed in the gallery and publicly distributed through a variety of systems.
Rebar (San Francisco)
http://www.rebargroup.org/
Rebar is an interdisciplinary collaborative group of artists, designers and activists based in San Francisco whose work often involves the exploration of niches and loopholes in the socio-spatial fabric of the urban environment as sites for public participatory art. Rebar is best known for their (PARK)ing Day in which the artists equipped themselves with enough quarters to transform metered parking spaces into temporary parks and green lounge spaces for urban residents over the course of a day. For The Gatherers, Rebar presents their latest design, the Bushwaffle, a series of modular inflatable outdoor furniture intended to soften any urban surface and provide space for freedom and play. Tours will take place starting at Noon on Sat, Nov 8 and Wed, Jan 7 (Free).
Since 2007, John Bela of Rebar has also been collaborating with Amy Franceschini and Garden for the Environment on the Victory Gardens project for the City of San Francisco. Re-imaging the Victory Gardens as a strategy for localized food production and urban sustainability in the 21st Century, Bela worked with Mayor Gavin Newsom and Slow Food Nation to create a Victory Garden outside City Hall. A video documenting the planting and harvesting of the Civic Center Victory Garden will be on view in the exhibition.
Åsa Sonjasdotter (Stockholm/Berlin)
http://www.potatoperspective.org/content.php?page=activities&ank=top
In Potato Perspective, Åsa Sonjasdotter investigates notions of biological diversity, migration and normalization by looking into the role of potato as colonial loot, global trade goods and as a carrier of regulated, sometimes patented or criminalized breeding knowledge. In past exhibitions and residencies, Sonjasdotter has worked with local communities to engage in urban farming, often breeding new potato varieties to discuss the juridical destination of this new genetic material. Sonjasdotter's perspective as a Swedish artist also makes the case that the potato is a food of crucial sustenance for populations in colder climates that do not have year-round growing seasons. On view will be a series of materials documenting the various locations where the "Potato Perspective" project has been realized.
roomservices (Istanbul/Stockholm)
www.roomservices.org
roomservices is a two-person collective (Evren Üzer and Otto Von Busch) that aims to equip urban residents with tools and a DIY mentality to undertake improvements to their urban social fabric. Their Hanging Gardens project revisits the hanging gardens of Babylon to implement them on a household level in urban locales. The project proposes a series of simple conceptual and practical instruments that permit the establishment of high-rise horticulture on apartment residents' balconies and rooftop spaces. The project encompasses visions and political proposals on a large scale as well as the possibility of developing simple DIY interventions on an individual scale.
The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres is part of YBCA's Imagining Our Future series, one of the three Big Ideas that guide this season's programming. In the midst of an ever-changing world, many artists wonder about what the future holds and what they can create to make life more enriching. Artists imagine a future that is as complex, rich and challenging as the present, but also one that is surprising and maybe even startling. YBCA brought together a group of artists whose visions of people, the kind of world they have created, and what the future could be within it are thought-provoking and often profoundly moving. The metaphorical power of art to help imagine the unknowable is at the heart of their work. Like many around them, these artists are driven by a sense of urgency about the future.
ABOUT YBCA
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), located in San Francisco's Yerba Buena cultural district, is one of the nation's leading multidisciplinary contemporary arts centers. With a belief that contemporary art is at the heart of community life, YBCA brings audiences and artists of all backgrounds together to express and experience creativity. The organization is known for nurturing emerging artists at the forefront of their fields and presenting works that blend art forms and explore the events and ideas of our time. As part of its commitment to the San Francisco Bay Area, YBCA supports the local arts community and reflects the region's diversity of people and thought through its arts and public programming.
Performing arts, visual arts and film/video programs are curated thematically around Big Ideas which illustrate the connections and associations between the works. Public programs and What's the Big Idea? Days, YBCA's popular free open house series, are dedicated to establishing a deeper understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. YBCA presents programming year-round in the Forum, Screening Room, Galleries and Novellus Theater. For tickets and information, call 415.978.ARTS (2787) or visit www.ybca.org. Join us and experience life…amplified!
FUNDING
YBCA's programs are made possible in part by: The Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, LEF Foundation, Novellus and Citibank
YBCA Exhibitions 08-09 are made possible in part by: AT&T, Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan and Members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Community Engagement and Youth Education Programs are made possible in part by: AAA of Northern California, Citibank, Irene S. Scully Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Potrero Nuevo Fund of theTides Foundation, The Sato Foundation, Koret Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, The Morris Stulsaft Foundation and Members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Community Engagement and Audience Development programs supported by a generous grant from The Wallace Foundation
Free First Tuesdays are underwritten by Directors Forum Members
Common Ground Magazine is the media sponsor for The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres
***ATTENTION CALENDAR AND LISTINGS EDITORS***
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS
The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres
When:
Oct 31, 2008 - Jan 11, 2009
What:
The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres
The Gatherers is an exhibition that brings together a diverse group of practitioners who combine art with cultural activism to explore questions of how we ensure sustainability for our growing urban populations. Since our relationship with nature varies so much from one culture or locale to the next, The Gatherers provides an opportunity to explore not only the differences, but also the similarities, of their attempts to green our urban spaces. In doing so, it touches upon a broad range of interlinking matters, from environmental issues to urban spatial justice, through interactive programs, urban interventions and public dialogue. Artists and artist collectives in the exhibition include: Fallen Fruit, Amy Franceschini with Wilson Diaz, The National Bitter Melon Council, Oda Projesi, Marjetica Potrc, Public Matters, Ted Purves with Suzanne Cockrell, Rebar, roomservices and Åsa Sonjasdotter. The Gatherers is guest co-curated by Berin Golonu and Veronica Wiman.
Who:
Guest co-curated by Berin Golonu and Veronica Wiman
Where:
YBCA Galleries, 701 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103
Public Info:
415-978-2787 or www.ybca.org
When galleries are fully open: $7 regular; $5 students, seniors & teachers; free for YBCA
Members
When galleries are partially open: $5 regular; $3 students, seniors & teachers; free for
YBCA Members
YBCA galleries are FREE to the public on the first Tuesday of every month. FREE First Tuesday is made possible in part by YBCA's Directors Forum Members
Hours:
Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon – 5 pm
Thu: noon – 8 pm
Closed Mondays and major holidays.
Media Contact Info:
Kimberly Harding at 415.321.1307 or kharding@ybca.org
Images can be found at http://www.ybca.org/about/press/press_images.aspx
