Olfactormativity: Exploring the Intervening Performativity of Smell

Smells intervene in human experience. Used by police or military for crowd control, they are a perfidious weapon.

Yet, they also offer a wealth of material for intervening arts, the exploration of which is currently gaining traction against a backdrop of climate change and the rise of sexism and racism.

So far, however, research on the intervening potential of smell has remained the province of Military Sciences, with research on intervening arts focusing on the visual and the auditory, neglecting the disruptive power of olfaction.

OLFAC bridges this gap by, for the first time, exploring the intervening performativity of smell at the intersection of arts and politics.

Assuming that odour can be used both to stigmatize and, at the same time, to help “unlearn” socially trained norms, OLFAC will (1) empirically investigate olfactory actors, techniques and technologies applied across performing arts and governmental contexts and (2) develop an integrative, transculturally aligned, and intersectionally oriented theory of Olfactormativity.

Fundamentally, the project explores the following questions: How do olfactory techniques and technologies applied in performing arts relate to those used by police and military? What dangers and potential for change do they pose? In what sense are olfactory actors capable of interrupting, subverting or displacing movements of assembly?

To what extent can olfactory art break up historically evolved social structures and change perceptual routines? Does the subversive use of odours lead to radical ruptures and changes in terms of gender, class, and ethnicity? Or does it ultimately lead to strengthening conventional concepts of identity?

A highly transdisciplinary endeavour, OLFAC draws together approaches and findings from Art-Related Disciplines, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Psychology, Neurobiology and Chemistry and is set to establish an entirely new playing field for studying the interaction of power, arts, and the senses.