There Is in the Kitchen

Charlotte Koopman has run a kitchen for the past 15 years and has always responded to both crises and festivities by cooking. ‘There Is in the Kitchen’ is a look at how to begin writing, which turned out to be not that different from preparing a meal. Both are prose bordering on poetry, both speak in a multitude of languages.

‘There Is in the Kitchen’ is a series of essays, an inventory of what coexists in the kitchen, a larder stocked with particular interests. Ranging from the singular- Mandarino Tardivo di Ciaculli or Pistacia Terebinthus to the expansive- the cross- rhythm, close encounters, seasonality.

Charlotte Koopman (1975, Groningen, NL) is co-founder of the kitchen collective Otark, established in 2009. Besides cooking a weekly Sunday breakfast for 13 years, Otark cooks in different rhythms and contexts and with changing line-ups, responding to film, sound, language, the weather. Otark has a strong preference for Handwork / Close-ups (the near) / Off-beat (the far out) / Slow-mo / Slapstick / Roots and Leaves. Otark works with foundation versus the wind, home cooking on the go, and works, like cooks do, within the framework of a timeline, rhythm, repetition, seasonality and transience. Charlotte Koopman writes, reads, draws and photographs, but always from the kitchen.