Throughout 2022, Contemporary Lynx published 10 articles with episodes of Kitchen Conversations – a podcast produced by writer and podcaster Patrycja Rozwora and featuring talented Eastern European artists. Each episode is an inspiring and in-depth conversation with one talented artist from so-called ‘Eastern Europe.’ They discussed pressing issues such as sex education among young people, issues of identity in the context of belonging and displacement, the war in Ukraine and self-emancipation of oppressed women and ethnic minorities. Additionally, in each episode the invited artists share their favourite food from home, which then made it into the Kitchen Conversations Cookbook: Homey Recipes from Artists, published this year by Contemporary Lynx Publishing.
If you missed listening to them, the festive holiday season is the perfect time to catch up with these episodes.
The first guest to appear on the podcast in 2022- live from Berlin – was Kai Hermann, publicist, academic, and the host of the ost.GAYze podcast, a predominantly German-speaking show that focuses on queer Eastern-European perspectives from and in Germany. Following his current master’s degree in Gender Studies, this episode also discussed the importance of sex education, especially for young people, and different ways of teaching it both in Germany and in Poland.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5aUUa7uDSuZ8IqOY6cyrRg?si=B5icZlCNRWypQrg0SUQgjA
The second podcast episode featured the long planned conversation with Maja ∀. Ngom – a Polish-Senegalese artist currently based in London. Maja’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses photography, installation, video, text and sculpture. On the podcast, Maja shares thoughts about her installation The Sweet Taste of Otherness that explores issues of identity in the context of belonging and displacement, which is also directly connected to her experience of coming from an intergenerational and multi-ethnic family.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5cgzmUCFWG6MJVXP9v4UcT?si=RRQ_-ZATTdqUfb03xxeO7A
Almost two months into 2022, on February 24th, all of us woke up to the terrifying and at that time still unbelievable news of Russia invading the sovereign country of Ukraine. The world was in panic. What will happen to Ukraine? What will happen to Europe? Many cultural institutions and cultural workers had to rethink how to act and what content to produce in order to actually support and help Ukraine and other people affected by the war.
As an act of support, Patrycja Rozwora created a four episode mini series, fully devoted to art and culture from Ukraine. In every episode, she asked a friend and Ukrainian artist to share with her 3 aspects of Ukrainian culture to research and share with an international audience. For Kitchen Conversations for Ukraine episode 1, recommendations were given by Tatyana Ostapenko – a Ukrainian-American painter who first appeared on the podcast back in June 2021. Tatyana advises and recommends listeners to take a look at Pavlo Borshchenko, Anna Sarvira and Zhanna Kadyrova’s visual artwork.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nk7dCobQyMrHLDqJhpqH9?si=SvBP4NUoRRS-pfhuz1BNmA
Episode 2 for Ukraine was curated by Ukrainian artist and photographer Olga Permiakova, based in Amsterdam. Her recommendations included a film by Sergei Parajanov Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, music by singer and rapper Alina Pash as well as the iconic artworks by visual artist Maria Prymachenko.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6spBdFLKRB3xayMxkX6jhm?si=S3snfcHRSBmVaBXNny_T0w
For Episode 3, aspects of Ukrainian art and culture were shared by a Ukrainian-Brazilian photographer based in Utrecht named Alex Blanco. Having a strong connection to her home city Odessa, Alex shared her favourite book Odessa Stories by Isaac Babel and the magical Privoz Market – one of the biggest European food markets, also featured in the book. On top of that, Alex also recommended watching Everything is Illuminated by Live Schreiber.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3dJnRJTACEaAD7IuEUMkYB?si=O7hTqGzVS4u5jBEXDXaI5Q
Lastly, Episode 4 was featuring recommendations by artist and researcher Yuliia Elyas. In this episode, you can hear about two books: ‘Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex’ by Oksana Zabuzhko and ‘In Isolation. Dispatches from Occupied Donbas’ by Stanislav Aseyev as well as about a Soviet film by Dziga Vertov titled ‘Enthusiasm: The Symphony of Donbas’
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/32XORl0wVUvAzomrbSCR0R?si=lqeUzYmXQlusGX_7-fYvGQ
At the beginning of May and in-between publishing episodes for Ukraine, Kitchen Conversation also released a beautiful interview with Georgian visual artist Sophia Tabatadze, recorded before the war that broke out in February. On the podcast, Sophia sheds light on the making-of her experimental documentary film Pirimze and the creation of her company Mukao that makes innovative products from corrugated cardboard.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5G6bY5wmxFCKaTspNAzXOf?si=gj_yggjZQKukxBICB2XJrA
In summer, the podcast was visited by wonderful Bosnian artist and activist of Romani descent Selma Selman – who at the time of the interview showed her work at Documenta 15 in Kassel and in Manifesta 14 in Prishtina. On the podcast, Selma shares stories of her past and talks about her artistic and activist practice, which aims to protect and empower female bodies and enact a cross-scalar approach to collective self-emancipation of oppressed women and ethnic minorities.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/29vzFwAedFFbAUJUbRZlZx?si=403b3b1d186e4491
A month after, another Georgian creative joined the podcast, namely a documentary filmmaker Mariam Agladze, whom Patrycja met during the Grandmother Film Festival in Rotterdam. During the conversations, apart from covering the process of working with her half-grandparents Nanuli and Gogi, Mariam also shares the making-of her two other short films – One in Seven (2019) and Trapped Inside (2021) both touching upon important, but little discussed topics of domestic violence and life with a disability.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xscKi7fVBVniX6A809W05?si=c4WELQJiQiOhiMxv1oti4w
For the end of the year, the podcast featured a very special conversation with curator Mary Jane Jacob conducted live from Tate Modern. On the occasion of the new exhibition Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope, Kitchen Conversations created a podcast for Contemporary Lynx Magazine with the support of the Polish Cultural Institute in London. The episodes speaks about the decades-long collaboration between the artists and curator that gives us a unique and personal portrait of Magdalena Abakanowicz: a Polish woman, artist, sculptor, writer and thinker whose timeless work can tell so much about our current relationship with the environment and the world around us.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1LGMNawoz2wxnou1nmanni?si=b0452980fc5649e3
Kitchen Conversations – podcast about contemporary art from so-called ‘Eastern Europe’ is produced by artist Patrycja Rozwora (since May 2020). You can become a patron of this podcast and support it via patreon.com/kitchenconversations.
