National Bitter Melon Council

Listed below are the original members of the National Bitter Melon Council in 2004. These original members helped support us in our first year of events and were also collaborators on the Sifting the Inner Belt project that Summer. If you’d like to join the list and become a member, click HERE.

Jeremy Chan Peng Chu, born in Singapore
Jeremy is a Singapore born artist, researcher, photographer, designer, makeup artist, and cultural worker. His recent interactive installations and projects examine the framework of cultural space production, representation and hybridism of form in contemporary landscape urbanism. His research interests include the vernacular architecture, cultural theory, sociology, philosophy and gender studies. Jeremy is currently based in Singapore, where he is working on a community-based public art project Singapore Heartlands Project (working title) with artists Jay Koh and Chu Chu Yuen.

Catherine D'lgnazio (kanarinka), born in South Carolina
Kanarinka is an artist and the Co-Director of iKatun, an organization whose mission is to present artwork that fosters public engagement in the politics of information. Her research interests include participatory culture, critical cartography, sex/gender studies and the emotional landscape of Homeland Insecurity. She works collaboratively to create performances, software, and experimental social gatherings. She is also a member of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, collaborates with groups like spurse and is co-editing the publication A Thousand Tiny Sexes. She teaches at RISD’s Digital+Media graduate program and Emerson College.

William Ho, born in Michigan
William received a joint Master in City Planning and Master in Real Estate Development candidate at MIT. He has a professional background in community organizing and has worked on issues of affordable housing, environmental justice, and youth leadership development in the cities of Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. William holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies, with a concentration in Environmental Policy & Behavior, from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. His interests include photography, travel, and reading.

Natalie Loveless, born in Canada
Natalie is a Ph.D. candidate in The History of Consciousness interdisciplinary humanities program at the University of California, Santa Cruz; her dissertation addresses trans-disciplinary pedagogy and its intersection with socially engaged art practices. Since 2003 her art practice has included conversation-based installation, social intervention work and more traditional forms of durational action-art. She has performed both locally and abroad in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, and acted as guest curator for the 2007-8 performance art season at The Western Front, Vancouver, Canada.

Kim Szeto, born in Boston, MA
Kim grew up in Boston and recently graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, MA. While at Wheaton Kim discovered her passion for environmental justice and agriculture which resulted in an independent major in Environmental Studies that particularly focused on food justice. She has been a gardener at the Berkeley Community Garden in Boston for the past four years, growing various vegetables including the bitter melon (of course). She is currently working at the Food Project.

Interns

Valarie Bianchi