»Kultur denken. Season 8 Episode 1: OLFAC with Silke Felber, Freda Fiala, Julia Ostwald

00:00:23: Welcome to a new season of Kultur Denken Thinking Culture, the podcast for the EFK – The International Research Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design in Linz.

00:00:36: We are not actually IN LINZ.

00:00:38: we're here in Vienna with a very special symposium that I'm truly excited about titled All Fuck Sensing Across the Humanities, Science & Arts.

00:00:48: My name is Katharina Rahn And i am at this symposium gathering their thoughts.

00:00:54: The research project OILFAK investigates the intervening performativity of smell at the intersection of arts and politics.

00:01:01: The project explores how olfactory techniques and technologies are employed in artistic as well as governmental contexts.

00:01:09: Central to OLFAK is a notion that smell can stigmatize but it also helps us unlearn ingrained social norms, opening up new pathways for reflection and transformation.

00:01:20: This is how organizer and principal investigator of the research project, Silke Felber introduces this symposium.

00:01:27: It was almost exactly three years ago that I reached out to some of you with a quite brittle idea called olfaktormativity.

00:01:38: I was just beginning to write on a proposal, have the possibility of working for five years with brilliant colleagues about the performativity of smell.

00:01:50: So i applied an Consolidated Grant at the European Research Council and almost unbelievably it worked out!

00:02:01: The proposal is funded division held and today for the very first time we are gathering here in this amazing room.

00:02:11: And I admit that this moves me deeply.

00:02:15: All factory experience is ephemeraly persistent, it's sticky volatile above all transcorporeal.

00:02:25: Crucially smell intervenes directly as both molecular and symbolic agent, becoming contagious with our biochemistry as well as our sensations movements.

00:02:38: And thoughts.

00:02:39: smell traverses thematological neurological and immunological thresholds opening us outwards from olfaction and performativity, gestures toward long entwinements with colonial racializing and environmental violence well established in sensory studies.

00:03:12: Yet, olfag seeks something further.

00:03:16: Crucially our effective responses to smell can be unlearned or relearned.

00:03:23: Neuroscience shows that associative learning shapes how olfactory stimuli are represented in the sensory-specific cortex, and what field could be more suited for such repatterning than the arts?

00:03:39: If molecules shift meaning like words then smell is not only a record of world's past.

00:03:47: It is a medium for worlds yet to come.

00:03:51: And with this rather utopian thought, let's dive straight in and talk about the olfactory.

00:03:57: I am speaking And Julia Ostwald, a dance scholar and postdoctoral researcher within the Alfaq Project at the University of Lincajulia.

00:04:28: Hi!

00:04:29: Could you explain maybe what does it mean to smell?

00:04:34: How does that work?

00:04:35: I think what makes smells such fascinating field research is that it sits on crossroads of academic works then also culture social memory.

00:04:48: So every scent that we perceive basically begins to reach us as a cloud of volatile molecules, tiny chemical messengers that drift through the air.

00:05:01: then they reach our receptors in our noses and trigger patterns way.

00:05:15: how the experience is translated, it's widely shaped by the memories we have and the social habits that we have acquired.

00:05:27: The same sort of smell compound can signal danger in one context then comfort another.

00:05:35: Smell is therefore never just a chemistry.

00:05:37: this basically chemistry plus history.

00:05:40: so when we analyze an aromatic compounds We also trace an afterlife of for example plants or industries, colonial trade routes and material practices that are attached to how our perception engages with the molecule in its structure.

00:06:00: Yes it even becomes more complicated because we don't only smell.

00:06:08: on a molecular level research is suggesting predictive coding models to understand what is happening when we are smelling.

00:06:18: So for example, if we see something... If you have a visual cue our brain is suggesting a smell and also in case that the specific smell does not appear We have the feeling To smell this kind of thing.

00:06:39: I know the feeling actually

00:06:41: And maybe it's interesting Is that in contrast to the other sense, a smell is possessed... ...in that part of the brain.

00:06:52: That it's most ancient one and related to memory?

00:06:57: Why is so

00:06:58: difficult to describe a smell?

00:07:00: if I would describe something as C?

00:07:03: I can describe the form, height colors same for sounds but with smells good or

00:07:11: bad.

00:07:12: Yes i think this.

00:07:14: So there are a few explanations.

00:07:17: Like, oh was it complicated?

00:07:18: But one explanation is that at least in the so-called Western world or in the global North our vocabulary when it comes to smell is very poor.

00:07:29: this has to do with how we have been trained to conceptualize the word.

00:07:36: This has to deal with western philosophy where the sense of smell not always and from everybody, but very often has been regarded as a kind of poor sense.

00:07:51: I would also like to add that this is actually crucial in how our work relates the term atmosphere because if we look at certain social histories narrated Usually, you will find that atmosphere or atmospheric conditions are hardly talked about.

00:08:14: If we look for example to the cycles of Chinese dynasties moments of political collapse almost always tied to environmental conditions – droughts, harsh winters crop failures some kind So literally the air and its qualities, that what transmits molecules was seen as an indicator in history.

00:08:42: In Chinese history as a sign for cosmic imbalance and social disorder that followed from there we have parallels in European history.

00:08:59: the Kleine Eiszeit.

00:09:03: It didn't just change the weather, it produced hunger displacement and a deep social unrest.

00:09:09: so climate and air were never neutral backdrops but actually active forces that shape political and social life.

00:09:18: this is the condition that can be analyzed when using olfaction as a method to ask different histories.

00:09:29: In the end of the nineteenth century in the United States, but not only there were huge smell troubles because of growing industries and so on.

00:09:39: Yeah?

00:09:39: The so-called great stinks.

00:09:41: So cities thought about this problem And tried out different tools and different things.

00:09:49: One idea was to interview citizens About the sources of ugly orders.

00:10:01: On this basis, they published so-called stench maps to locate the sources of specific orders and in this context all factory expertise for citizens or women were considered on a same level like those of chemists, of physicians and so on.

00:10:24: So there was no difference between a so-called lay knowledge... ...and scientific

00:10:31: knowledge.".

00:10:50: We have to hold each other accountable, and we do hold each another accountable for shifting our ways of writing towards a more smell-inclusive terminology or towards a sense based way of actually communicating.

00:11:12: And in this way often realize how deeply ocular, centristic languages and sort of perspective-based ways of seeing... ...and ways of working and writing as academics.

00:11:32: And I think that's something when you become aware of it….

00:11:37: …you realize there needs to be Yeah, intersectional perspectives and interdisciplinary perspectives that slowly but surely try to grow towards a different way of expression.

00:11:52: But this is interesting because we lack specific vocabulary... ...but when it comes to stigmatizing people become very creative.

00:12:05: words connected to smell or imaginary smells, to describe.

00:12:11: Or other people.

00:12:12: Smell is deeply woven into how societies regulate bodies... ...how they create atmospheres and construct identities.

00:12:23: This means on a molecular level but also in the symbolic one.

00:12:29: What we have been trying do this project I think it's different from others projects is that we look at smells, at the intersection of matter and meaning.

00:12:41: This means for example that we have been also dealing with olfactory substances used by police or military which kind of stigmatized bodies in two ways.

00:12:55: so on one hand really a molecular level there are substances So, they really kind of settle on bodies under skin for at least three weeks.

00:13:09: This is one side.

00:13:10: so social interaction becomes almost impossible because you can't stand the person your talking with.

00:13:19: On other hand we don't have to forget that these mechanisms this governmental mechanism also follow a logic which deeply embedded in history If we look, for example at European travel literature.

00:13:34: We find a lot of stereotypes when it comes to specific religious groups racialized groups and so on.

00:13:43: So these kind of stereotypes get triggered by material substances produced And reproduced by governmental actors.

00:13:54: We looked For example who is exposed To certain smells Who was protected from them who controls these smells, or who profits from them.

00:14:04: And what are the socio-ecological and also their cultural and art histories that I revealed through such a way of thinking?

00:14:15: So in this way... The individual exposure is kind of one side to question but on other sides it matters more about how larger groups of people are actually controlled, managed and exposed and disciplined through what smell cultures do.

00:14:44: I think it's also quite

00:14:47: crucial

00:14:48: to emphasize the key differences between seeing and smelling.

00:14:53: so one of these key differences for example lies in how they organize space and time.

00:15:01: So vision relies on stable and measurable coordinates.

00:15:05: It gives us perspectives, outlines shapes and distances.

00:15:10: so more or less a world that feels solid and consistent.

00:15:15: Smell on the contrary works entirely differently.

00:15:19: it unfolds through shifting intensities which means that it has no clear edges bodily and situationally.

00:15:33: Because when we smell, We are always not only open to the world but... ...we are part of the world.

00:15:41: It's a huge step When we talk about questions Of climate injustice for example..of movement ..of world-making.

00:15:52: Both movement & smell Are crucial for shaping the space or how we move through a space and how we perceive space.

00:16:03: And it teaches us about thinking of buildings in more holistic manner, as if you think about air conditions for example.

00:16:12: usually they... The air that circulates through air condition especially public building reaches entire space.

00:16:21: so one room hosts an event where a heavy smell is spreading, usually that smell would travel across all spaces and eventually reach places which are not supposed to be engaged in the event.

00:16:39: What you can sort of imagine from this case... ...is that smell has been an uninvited guest at the level of cultural heritage institutions

00:16:52: Since when?

00:16:53: And why do think...?

00:16:55: Is that contemporary art is trying new ways of dealing with the smell or working with smells?

00:17:04: We are all dealing with contemporary arts practices.

00:17:08: However, we have...we all have a trans-historical approach.

00:17:13: you can go back to antiquity and probably even further.

00:17:17: in Greek theater smell played a crucial role and if you go on, find practices through the centuries everywhere in the world.

00:17:28: What is interesting that we were talking about this before since the eighteenth century was rather denigrated.

00:17:40: It was excluded in the discourse mainly, but not so much in the practices themselves.

00:17:47: I think dealing with smell became crucial because of several reasons in recent times... ...because of climate crisis and also because of the Covid pandemic.

00:17:59: In many ways cultural studies and arts air in all its dimensions became a topic.

00:18:08: One of them current developments that our symposium is now not directly engaging with, but something just to keep in the back of listeners' heads perhaps.

00:18:19: Is there development of sensory AI?

00:18:23: For example, In the context of medicine There are currently several attempts being made To design so-called artificial noses devices and softwares that are able to detect illnesses at a very early stage by smelling on your skin, in certain parts of the body where certain organs are located.

00:18:48: This is an interesting potentially futuristic kind of work being done something now not at As one of the pathways to our future work, it may take a relevant scale.

00:19:09: The interesting thing is that... ...the difference between human smelling and the smell of e-noses for example isn't so big because both are based on pattern matching.

00:19:23: I mean i can give you an example which confirms the subtle governmental way in which we're interested.

00:19:33: It is a choreography by Akkaditza Ides, the choreographer based in Brussels which actually deals with threat of AI but relates it also to the Chernobyl catastrophe.

00:19:48: In that way both are dealing with disinformation and not knowing what's happening And the entire performance is bathed

00:19:59: into

00:20:00: the scent of lavender.

00:20:02: It's not written anywhere.

00:20:04: Just mentioned as a trigger warning that you will smell lavender, so it is not used in an offensive way but rather amplifies how governmental disinformation and also disinformation through AI are working by calming.

00:20:24: Smell isn't used here for intervention on a subconscious layer, repeating how governmental mechanisms are working.

00:20:35: Maybe one anecdote which also shows an interesting aspect of what Silke mentioned before – How Smells Working?

00:20:42: I saw the performance two times and I smelled the lavender both times because i read about it in a review but afterwards Actually, they forgot about putting the lavender smell in first evening but I did smell it.

00:21:07: This symposium brings together scholars from various disciplines.

00:21:12: Could you give an overall or first overview of this symposium and idea behind?

00:21:20: The cultural history is still only partially written And I think Silke's very fine nose, if i may say that in the metaphorical sense for this particular gap within these growing and emerging research fields has allowed us to locate precisely this context.

00:21:47: To sort of translate into the framework of our project asking with a specific focus on arts and politics in the Austrian context where the project is situated.

00:22:04: So we'll welcome many of those people who have supported The Project from the very beginning, And this gathering will give us an extraordinary opportunity that most of them are actually going to travel to Vienna.

00:22:24: immersive discussions on olfactory conversations.

00:22:29: Which are the disciplines

00:22:30: they're

00:22:31: coming together from?

00:22:33: There will be colleagues coming from art history, chemistry and psychology performance in dance studies.

00:22:42: there many artists part of project also a part of symposium.

00:22:50: Can you say each of a few words about

00:22:53: your

00:22:53: own presentation and research field?

00:22:58: I will be speaking on camphor, an substance that was extracted in both crystal and also oil from trees.

00:23:14: imported to Europe and the US from Taiwan.

00:23:17: When we look at newspapers in Vienna, where Kampfer was actually praised and marketed publicly as one of the potential medicines against cholera which obviously from today's perspective we know medically did not have any effects My contribution actually picks upon one historic scene where a German journalist strolls around the fair grounds of the Vienna World Expo in eighteen seventy-three and describes The Chinese Pavilion to have strong odorous scent.

00:24:03: He describes the gallery, To Have A Scent So Strong That One Quote Could expel the moths of the entire world.

00:24:13: This historic scene gives us an idea that gallery space must have given people a really kind of overwhelming sensorial impression while when we just look at images, photographic images that have endured... ...the test-of time we can't tell the presence of Kemper from these images.

00:24:40: So my key argument in my contribution is that if we look to the history of Kemfer, what the pattern that we see?

00:24:49: it's usually told as one infrastructure and modernization while at the same time moving out the ruptures The indigenous dispossession, ecological devastation that made these infrastructures possible and were really relevant to this period in Taiwan, in the late Qing dynasty.

00:25:12: And early Japanese colonial periods where camphor was extracted from militarized camps... ...and people were sort of governed by the desire to reach into forests and cut out trees only by cutting.

00:25:33: Descent actually becomes palpable to the human nose.

00:25:37: So this is also an interesting dimension.

00:25:39: that descent actually tells you a story of pain and a story off, Of a broken relationship to nature.

00:25:47: it isn't.

00:25:47: although It may smell pleasant to some And it is marketed as a healing substance It actually comes from very harmful process As such

00:25:57: To both man and Nature

00:25:59: to both man and nature, yes.

00:26:01: Depending of course on whose historic perspective you're focusing on?

00:26:06: Thank-you!

00:26:07: Yeah maybe I can jump onto this.

00:26:10: my research is based on the question how contemporary art can deal with climate change because there was a recurring argument that we cannot sense climate change but it does exactly the arts somehow sensually perceptible.

00:26:33: But if we go back in history from the perspective of the racial capital scene, which starts in early modernity so fiftieth-sixteenth century with for example The Spice Trade was an early or proto-colonial structure spreading around.

00:26:58: what we now experience actually started, but it is also the time when smell was broadly used in the arts and particularly in ballet or performances

00:27:13: that

00:27:13: dealt with dance movement.

00:27:18: And they were commissioned by monarchical settings, economic setting for example but also in religious settings, for example in bellies by the Jesuits.

00:27:30: So actually this is a framework I am dealing with my research... ...I try to find examples of these archives.

00:27:41: I'm looking at performances from early modernity that use smell and how it was used.

00:27:47: which function was given into the smell to perform power.

00:27:53: If we look at performances today that try to reactivate or reorient the senses so, We can perceive climate change perceptible and often.

00:28:07: We are all haunted by colonial mechanisms And also our sensorium is still haunted by Colonial structures and by ways we have learned to perceive into smell for example.

00:28:20: So this the ambivalence that I would like to show and which i'm interested in, art today is using smells and sensorial practices.

00:28:34: How can they do this?

00:28:35: without trapping again in the same orientalist mechanisms established during centuries of history?

00:28:51: is to follow the smellable traces of the molecule's schedule within the logics of capitalism.

00:29:03: And I will start from a performative speech act, let say... ...from this speech-act Merde which was used not only in French theatres but right now and all over the world which means ... or ... and you are not allowed to say thank-you, otherwise it really brings Merth in another sense.

00:29:31: And I was interested in the specific alchemical magic of this speech act with a historical dimension... We don't know that for sure but there is evidence with the specific situation of theater in the eighteenth, nineteenth century maybe seventeenth-century.

00:29:53: So more horses gather in front of the theatre... More people are there ...more shit is there and this kind logic of success.

00:30:07: This will be my initial situation from which I kind of trace this specific molecule and I will look at specific art productions, contemporary art productions.

00:30:21: I would look at Florentina Holzinger's A Year Without Summer but also what we are now framing as the biggest theater scandal of Austria namely Hildenblatt from Thomas Bernhardt in Vienna where Scattle also played a huge role.

00:30:42: One more question, in the very beginning you said

00:30:45: your way

00:30:46: of thinking changed through this project?

00:30:50: I mean what i can say is that my initial idea was to look at the intervening capacity or the intervened agency of smell what we can call the arts and politics

00:31:10: or

00:31:11: governmental contexts, anti-arts.

00:31:14: What we figured out together I think is that it really makes sense to do this from a transhistorical perspective... ...and from a translocal perspective.

00:31:24: This not only a shift regarding focus of research questions but also frames the way we are thinking about smell, I guess.

00:31:38: It seems to be somehow an unavoidable side effect that kicks in after a certain period That you become more sensitive towards The atmospheres of production.

00:31:49: they're actually enabling certain works to become made or certain Materials to become available.

00:32:00: so i would say Orfaction In A Way fundamentally opens sort of the colonial attention.

00:32:09: It opens towards an awareness for patterns of exclusion, may they be racial?

00:32:17: May it be class-based as it translates what is usually considered just in atmosphere or just a byproduct and actually centers on those side histories that are not side histories, but they're just the history's that are sidelined or sidestepped.

00:32:41: Yeah and maybe I can add for me now that we all have been working on it within one year my perspective of methodological approach changed in such a way.

00:32:59: it's okay to find only really, really subtle hints.

00:33:04: so that is my task.

00:33:06: To pick up these tiny notions or annotations.

00:33:10: yeah its more trust this very tiny remarks you are stumbling over in between the lines.

00:33:19: Very good.

00:33:24: Thank you

00:33:32: so much, thank you!

00:33:46: This

00:33:46: was the first episode of Kulturt Denken at the Olfax Symposium in Vienna in December twenty-five.

00:33:54: I've been speaking with three organizers of this symposium Silke Felber, Freda Fialer and Julia Ostwald.