Origins of Scent Culture Institute
Scent Culture Institute originates from the two research projects „Wissensduft“ (2010-2013) and „New Scents in Action“ (2014-2018) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and based at Bern University of the Arts and the Business Department at Bern University of Applied Sciences. Thus, the projects capitalize on the interdisciplinary collaboration between management and design research, cultural studies as well as business, artistic and design practice. Claus Noppeney and Nada Endrissat have primarily developed and worked on these projects. Robert Lzicar used his background in communication design to contribute visual analyses and a design research perspective to the project.
Bern Biannial as Incubator
Scent Culture Institute was then created in the context of Bern Biennial 2014.  Claus Noppeney, Marta Kwiatkowski, Ashraf Osman and Andreas Wilhelm used Scent Culture Institute as an artistic label for performing the Bern Urban Scent Walks – for more information on the people involved. Hence, we took the work further: delivering talks, running workshops and writing articles…
Scent Culture Institute moving on …
Following the first activities friendships and cooperations with numerous people and institutions in Switzerland as well as abroad developed. Since 2015, the Swiss based initiative has been partnering with the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles – the partnership has been focusing on the Art and Olfaction Awards. In 2016, the Kunstmuseum Thun cooperated with Scent Culture Institute on a re-examination of the collection of the museum through the curatorial lens of scent. In this context, Ashraf Osman co-curated a series of olfactory exhibitions during 2017.
More recently, new people joined and a new visual identity & internet presence was created. One of the next steps is the Scent Culture Initiative for local action in Switzerland: topical, experimental & inspiring. We hope that this initiative attract an open minded as well as “open nosed” fellowship. We want to play and delight in the least celebrated of our human senses: smell. More changes will follow.
We continue our work in flux…
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
[blog_subscription_form title=”” title_following=”You are already subscribed” subscribe_text=”” subscribe_logged_in=”Click to subscribe to this site” subscribe_button=”Click me!” show_subscribers_total=true]