“Non-Violent Kitchen Table”: Another Way of Knowing and Belonging in the Space of the Global Tuberculosis Response

On November 12-16, 2024, I joined thousands of researchers, scientists, health professionals, government officials, civil society and Tuberculosis (TB) affected communities at the annual international event, The Union World Conference on Lung Health (The Union Conference). The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) which hosts the annual Union World Conference, has been a leader in the fight against TB since its founding in 1920. Among its objectives, The Union seeks to improve TB prevention and care by the generation, dissemination and implementation of knowledge into policy and practice.

It has not been my first participation in the annual Union Conference. In fact, I have attended these events numerous times, both as a participant and as a presenter, throughout my professional career in the field of global health. This year, however, I joined the event in the new role of a PhD candidate in social anthropology, an early-stage ethnographer of the global TB policy making and resource allocations. The Union Conference, as a social gathering where ideas, discourses, and networks entangling the global TB response develop and reproduce, was the perfect place to gain new insights and reflect on the meanings embedded in a social space of this international global health event.

One aspect of my observation was focused on the authority and aesthetics of knowledge creation. The Union Conference program includes plenary and expert sessions, workshops and post-graduate courses, oral abstract sessions and electronic posters, as well as TBscience, symposia and satellite sessions.  The Conference agenda is decided through a competitive process of abstract selection, with assessment and peer-reviewing processes aligned with public imaginations of what is credible and legitimate to generate, validate and disseminate knowledge. For the Union Conference 2024, the Coordinating Committee of Scientific Activities assessed 2576 abstracts, all of which underwent peer-review by at least three reviewers.  Although I have benefited from attending various sessions that disseminate authoritative knowledge on the challenges and solutions in the global TB response, it is the experience of immersing myself in the aesthetics of knowledge creation—incorporating sensory, emotional, and artistic dimensions—that has become the most meaningful for me. I owe this experience to Paulina Siniatkina, an artist, activist and TB survivor who enriches the space of the global TB response with alternative arts-based methods of knowing.  

Most of The Union Conference’s sessions and workshops are characterized by podiums and microphones, twilight and solemnity in the auditoriums, with entrance by QR-code registration badge being scanned and presence counted. Still, the conference also provides an opportunity to engage with other ways of knowing and belonging. In this regard, I reflect on a safe and informal space created by Paulina for important conversations about one’s own experience and role in the global TB response happening at a kitchen table covered with a homey-feeling white and red checkered tablecloth. The project, which Paulina named a “Non-Violent Kitchen Table” has been supported by KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, and conceived by her as a socially engaging art performance, built on the concept of trauma sensitivity and designed to work with affected communities. Quite symbolically, the kitchen table has been located at the so-called “Community Connect” area of The Union Conference. The area, which I would describe as integral, but somewhat separate from other conference events, where authoritative knowledge has been generated and disseminated, served as a social space where people chilled, networked, created ideas and explored avenues for future collaborations.

Joining the kitchen table, one meets Paulina and two other interlocutors to share the ideas and stories related to TB which they find important to them. Paulina started the session with her story of being sick with TB and the struggle she faced in taking countless antibiotics pills daily. One day, before taking the medicines, she poured the pills out of the medicine box and assembled them in patterns on a surface. This became a ritual, marking each day on her way to recovery. This ritual of transforming pills to patterns gave Paulina a sense of control and somehow eased her suffering from the inevitability of daily TB antibiotics,  helping her get through the long 10 months of treatment, 7 of which she spent in the hospital. Paulina’s experience mirrored the worldwide disparity in access to shorter TB treatment regimens with fewer side effects and set the tone for our conversation.  

Afterwards, Paulina handed us a small pill case with sweets-looking-like-medicines and invited us to share our stories while creating patterns, the way she did while on treatment. While my hands were occupied with assembling the patterns and changing the created forms to the new ones, I listened to the stories around Paulina’s kitchen table and reflected on a feeling of connection, care, and a sense of belonging to the community of people aiming to find the ways of ending suffering from the TB disease. Immersion in visual, sensory and emotional aspects of the arts-based methods of knowing, creative self-expression related to the aesthetics of knowledge production had a tremendous impact on my self-reflection and feeling of belonging and solidarity for a cause.  Although aesthetic knowledge is considered subjective and may not count towards evidence-based models that dominate authoritative knowledge production, this form of knowing really matters, especially because of its subjectivity. I believe that the subjective nature of our understanding and emotional engagement with expressive works shapes our knowing of self and grounds the potential for change by inspiring meanings that resonate deeply with our hearts.

You may also be interested in...