A Geography of Olfaction: Materials, Ecologies, Relations

Jun 19th - Jul 3rd, 2024

Smell is a material and spatial relation, historic and evolving. Smells are made in time and place, and practices of identification, extraction and rendering shape their valence. The sense is inseparable from the political life through which it circulates — characterized today by an ensemble of human industrial affective processes. And yet, it reverberates in with an undetermined surplus of traditional, scientific and embodied knowledge.

In this course, we will attend to the sense of smell in and as a historical milieu, inquiring into the ways it conditions knowledge about place, people, and things. Supported by readings from Karl Marx, C. Nadia Seremetakis, Kathleen Stewart and Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, we will challenge the contours of our notions of (olfactory) essence, and enact a sensory research methodology of walking, tasting, harvesting, distilling and composing a fragrance together. 

Taught by Leonora Zoninsein, Geographer and Perfumer of Night Air Scent Studio.