Apr 11, 2023 · Megan Hoetger
The Kitchen Table Talk
The Kitchen Table Talk (KTT) is a creative research methodology* and a gathering form. Departing from the earlier practice of the filmed panel discussion through which Black Speaks Back (BSB) staged numerous community discussions (such as Black Europeans Discuss Black Joy or What’s It Like Being Mixed in Europe? Black Europeans Discuss), the KTT gets intimate. It moves into the kitchen table setting of collective members’ domestic spaces where participants may feel more at home to enter the kinds of dialogues that can only happen over a meal or a cup of tea. The privacy of this space is maintained by also shifting from the video document to the audio recording. Protected from the regime of visuality, participants’ external image-based representations recede, and it is their words and, with them, their inner understandings of self and others that can come through.
In 2022, BSB held a series of three Kitchen Table Talks, each of which was preceded by a lengthy period of exchange with participants in preparation for the group discussions. The insights into intimacy collected from across the three gatherings have provided the basis for the Zwarte Ibis film, as well as initial materials for a podcast series, which BSB will create following the December 2023 premiere of their film. In tandem with each subsequent screening, the collective hopes to initiate another Kitchen Table Talk gathering, developing new episodes in the podcast series that offer a call and response to the group’s research questions, as well as their filmic experiment in presenting their research. In this way, the conversation continues to grow and transform, including an ever more diverse range of Black voices.
Below are a few images that give a sense of the atmosphere of the 2022 Kitchen Table Talks as they were staged in IJburg Amsterdam by collective members Chris Ci and Alexine Gabriela (who are seen in the first and second images respectively); and here are a few orienting notes for each those three gatherings:
In 2022, BSB held a series of three Kitchen Table Talks, each of which was preceded by a lengthy period of exchange with participants in preparation for the group discussions. The insights into intimacy collected from across the three gatherings have provided the basis for the Zwarte Ibis film, as well as initial materials for a podcast series, which BSB will create following the December 2023 premiere of their film. In tandem with each subsequent screening, the collective hopes to initiate another Kitchen Table Talk gathering, developing new episodes in the podcast series that offer a call and response to the group’s research questions, as well as their filmic experiment in presenting their research. In this way, the conversation continues to grow and transform, including an ever more diverse range of Black voices.
Below are a few images that give a sense of the atmosphere of the 2022 Kitchen Table Talks as they were staged in IJburg Amsterdam by collective members Chris Ci and Alexine Gabriela (who are seen in the first and second images respectively); and here are a few orienting notes for each those three gatherings:
Kitchen Table Talk #1: Intimacy with Self
(Convened on 12 June 2022)
Research questions: What is the relationship between intimacy and sexuality? Between identity and individual and collective needs for intimacy?
Kitchen Table Talk #2: Intimacy, Family and Intergenerational Transfer
(Convened on 25 September 2022)
Research questions: How do Black people of different ages understand love, intergenerational trauma, and the individual versus the collective? How do they understand the kinship network, including the nuclear family and extended families?
Kitchen Table Talk #3: Intimacy, Blackness and Gender
(Convened on 20 November 2022)
Research questions: Does gender play a role in the experiences of intimacy? What is at stake in performances of masculinity and femininity in expressions of intimacy?
*Check out the Curatorial note for more on the politics and strategies of BSB’s creative research methodology.
(Convened on 12 June 2022)
Research questions: What is the relationship between intimacy and sexuality? Between identity and individual and collective needs for intimacy?
Kitchen Table Talk #2: Intimacy, Family and Intergenerational Transfer
(Convened on 25 September 2022)
Research questions: How do Black people of different ages understand love, intergenerational trauma, and the individual versus the collective? How do they understand the kinship network, including the nuclear family and extended families?
Kitchen Table Talk #3: Intimacy, Blackness and Gender
(Convened on 20 November 2022)
Research questions: Does gender play a role in the experiences of intimacy? What is at stake in performances of masculinity and femininity in expressions of intimacy?
*Check out the Curatorial note for more on the politics and strategies of BSB’s creative research methodology.