Smells have a profound and often underestimated impact on human experience. They can evoke memories, shape emotions, and influence behavior in ways that are both subtle and powerful. With their unique ability to establish or unsettle routines, odours challenge perceptions, and provoke new ways of thinking. At the same time, they can deeply stigmatize or even (re-)traumatize, entrenching social divisions or triggering visceral reactions tied to violence and abuse. Their ephemeral nature allows smells to move between the intimate, the intrasubjective, and the collective, engaging deeply with dimensions of identity, remembrance, and space. In this way, smells carry the potential to both uphold and subvert social norms, offering a sensory medium for dynamics of control, resistance, and transformation.
Building on this unique potential, OLFAC investigates the intervening performativity of smell at the intersection of arts and politics. The project explores how olfactory techniques and technologies are employed in artistic as well as in governmental contexts. Central to OLFAC is the notion that smell can stigmatize, but it can also help us “unlearn” ingrained social norms, opening up new pathways for reflection and transformation. By exploring how odours interact with and reshape our perceptual habits, OLFAC aims to trace the ways in which the olfactory can challenge systems of power and identity. With the investigation of the transformative potential of olfaction, OLFAC opens new perspectives on the sensory dimensions of societal change.
OLFAC is a highly transdisciplinary endeavor, bringing together insights from arts, cultural studies, media studies, anthropology, psychology, neurobiology, and chemistry. Its goal is to develop a theory of olfactory performativity—Olfactormativity—that redefines the role of smell as a critical force in the interplay of politics, aesthetics, and the senses.
The following central questions guide the project:
How do olfactory techniques in the performing arts relate to those employed in structural governance, surveillance, and extrastatecraft? What risks and opportunities do they present for subverting or transforming social gatherings and assemblies?
How can the dimension of the olfactory be leveraged to interrupt habitual modes of perception and reimagine collective experiences?
Can olfactory arts disrupt entrenched notions of gender, class, and ethnicity, or when do they risk reinforcing conventional identity constructs and norms? Given its environmental nature, what does an olfactory perspective offer for queer, feminist, and ecological thinking?
How does the sense of smell, largely marginalized in the Western sensory hierarchy, relate to “olfactory cultures” and how is this reflected in art institutions and their codes of conduct, museum collections and the canon of performative arts? What role does decentralization play in rethinking the olfactory from transcultural and globalised perspectives?