Apr 11, 2023 · Megan Hoetger
On Intimacy
“There is a sense of wanting to protect from the violent public/outside world that makes that sharing vulnerability can become dangerous, however this can also mean that the room for intimacy within the private life becomes smaller and that tough love takes the overhand.”
In July 2022 Black Speaks Back (BSB) presented a performance for the If I Can’t Dance Introductory Event, which played with mirrors in an experiment on spatio-poetically manifesting the frameworks of projection and internalisation through which intimacies with self and others are formed. Following the performance, collective member Alexine Gabriela gave a presentation outlining the group’s approach to their community-based study of intimacy, including some discursive reference points, initial research questions and early observations from their research process. Taken from Gabriela’s presentation, the quotation above opens onto key coordinates in BSB’s investigation, articulating the fraught entanglements of exterior and interior lives and the effects these have on Black individuals’ psychic capacities for intimacy, as well as the material manifestations of those effects (eg. ‘tough love’). In the slideshow below you can read more from Gabriela’s presentation around themes such as: What is intimacy? How would we define it together? What does intimacy look like? What makes intimacy easy, what makes it hard? The collective discussed these questions and more with participants in their first Kitchen Table Talk gathering, some of whose thoughts and comments are also referenced in the slideshow (names have been redacted to protect participants’ privacy).
In July 2022 Black Speaks Back (BSB) presented a performance for the If I Can’t Dance Introductory Event, which played with mirrors in an experiment on spatio-poetically manifesting the frameworks of projection and internalisation through which intimacies with self and others are formed. Following the performance, collective member Alexine Gabriela gave a presentation outlining the group’s approach to their community-based study of intimacy, including some discursive reference points, initial research questions and early observations from their research process. Taken from Gabriela’s presentation, the quotation above opens onto key coordinates in BSB’s investigation, articulating the fraught entanglements of exterior and interior lives and the effects these have on Black individuals’ psychic capacities for intimacy, as well as the material manifestations of those effects (eg. ‘tough love’). In the slideshow below you can read more from Gabriela’s presentation around themes such as: What is intimacy? How would we define it together? What does intimacy look like? What makes intimacy easy, what makes it hard? The collective discussed these questions and more with participants in their first Kitchen Table Talk gathering, some of whose thoughts and comments are also referenced in the slideshow (names have been redacted to protect participants’ privacy).