Smells have a unique ability to intervene in human experiences. They are affective and immersive in their presence, activating and animating sensations on both conscious and unconscious levels. In this way, they can challenge perceptual routines trained in seeing and hearing. Smells are uncontainable, they exceed borders and cross through bodies without consent. The power of odours makes them not only attractive for governmental purposes of crowd control, but also a fascinating medium for intervening arts. So, how can the nose support us in (re-)thinking intervention? What can smells communicate and who can interpret them? How does the olfactory operate within systems of power? How is space claimed and impacted by the dispersal of scent? What does Western Thought smell like? How to intervene in conflicts over global power relations via smell? Can smells destabilize rigid boundaries and hierarchies? And what can we perceive through smell beyond a binary of pleasant and unpleasant? Silke Felber and Alanna Lynch will approach these questions by means of a lecture and an olfactory performance.

Silke Felber is Senior Scientist at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and Principal Investigator of the Stand-Alone Project “Performing Gender in View of the Outbreak” (FWF). Her current work addresses the intervening performativity of smell in terms of gender, class, and ethnicity. Most recently, she was a Mercator Fellow at the CRC 1512 “Intervening Arts”. Current publications include Travelling Gestures: Elfriede Jelineks Theater der (Tragödien-)Durchquerung (2023) and Susanne Kennedy: Reanimating the Theatre, co-edited with Inge Arteel and Cornelis van der Haven (2023). She was awarded the prestigious grants Hertha Firnberg (2016) and Elise Richter (2018) by the Austrian Science Fund FWF.

Alanna Lynch is a Berlin-based artist and researcher working with living entities, organic materials, smell, and performance – examining the politics of affect, questions of agency, and the stickiness of feelings. She draws on her background in Biology, Psychology, and Information Studies as well as from her own embodied experiences, activism, and textile studies. She has exhibited and performed internationally and was a recent artist in residence at the Banff Centre (Canada). She was a founding member of the artist collective Scent Club Berlin, and her work has been supported by grants from Germany, Canada, and Sweden. In 2018 she was awarded the Berlin Art Prize.

Moderated by Janette Helm.

An event of the Collaborative Research Centre 1512 “Intervening Arts” in Cooperation with the FWF Project P-34203 “Performing Gender in View of the Outbreak”. It is part of the laboratory format Intervention Space Art and Academia.