Cortando el melon/Cutting the melon
Could you explain politics using just a melon? Discover how volunteers at Venezuela's Central University managed this unique challenge and created art in the process!
Photographs and video, 2007.
Centre of Latin American Studies October - December
Cortando el Melon/Cutting the Melon was a participative event in which pairs of volunteers were presented with a melon, a knife and a chopping board. Each pair was asked to use the melon to explain their collective understanding of an aspect of the political situation in Venezuela. A total of four sessions over four hours covered topics as diverse as land reform, party political coherance, community media and the rise of Chavez's Fifth Republic Movement.
As an act of closure, participants were invited to share the melon, returning the instrument used for the explanation to its original edible, benign state. The work responds to the personality of modern Venezuela. It celebrates the proliferation of dialogue and interpretation within a very politically engaged populus. The project not only shows how social entities can be constructed and divided, but explores the fruitful, unpredictable process of dialogue.
About the artist:
Alan Warburton lives and works in Cambridge, and is a graduate of Critical Fine Arts Practice at Brighton University. He works collaboratively with other professionals, communities and organisations to explore the means and processes of conversation.