“Soil, Fir Trees, Lavender: Scents of Solastalgia and Nostalgia in Affective States of Crisis”
Julia at the DSA conference in Washington, D.C.
Under the title Indeterminate States: Bodies, Fields, Praxis, this year’s international conference of the Dance Studies Association addressed the plural meanings of ‘state’ and its current indeterminacies in view of global conflicts. Held at the George Washington University/Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in Washington, D.C., the five-day event offered a wide range of perspectives on the topic, spanning from the geopolitical to the aesthetic.
Against this backdrop, Julia’s paper Soil, Fir Trees, Lavender: Scents of Solastalgia and Nostalgia in Affective States of Crisis drew on various European choreographies to explore the potential of odors to evoke particular affective states—states that not only link the environmental with the political and the intimate with the collective, but also entail different modes of temporal attunement (a publication is forthcoming). The conference provided an opportunity to introduce OLFAC in the context of Dance Studies and to engage with fellow researchers and artists.
