“Face-to-face interaction penetrates in a gaseous form into our most intimate inner being. The current Coronavirus outbreak surfaces a forgotten concept of communication that is deeply ingrained in culture: Face-to-face communication is a miasmic intercourse.” – CLAUS NOPPENEY
“Amuse-bouche. The Taste of Art” at Museum Tinguely
«Amuse-bouche. The Taste of Art» is the third art experiment at Museum Tinguely in Basel, 19 February – 17 May 2020, entering the world of the human senses.
Chanel 5 & world history
“The scent of empires: Chanel Nº 5 and Red Moscow” is the title of a new book by the noted German historian of Eastern Europe Karl Schlögel.
Political protest: “Scent of Terror”
The sense of smell can be an instrument of political protest as this current example shows. An investor wants to re-use a former site of terror in Moscow for a perfume store.
Cognitive impotence
“If olfaction were his most important sense, man’s linguistic incapacity to describe olfactory sensations would turn him into a creature tied to his environment. Because they are ephemeral, olfactory sensations can never provide a persistent stimulus of thought. Thus the development of the sense of smell seems to be inversely...
Deceptive powers
“Our eyes are not easy to fool. Smelling is another matter.” – LEWIS THOMAS
DIY Perfumer
“The only qualification I have is a school certificate I was awarded at thirteen … I am self taught and have become who I am through encounters with people and individuals and, of course, with their work. ” – JEAN-CLAUDE ELLENA
Smells inform about life and death
“Smells are not decodable. Nor can they be inventoried, for no inventory of them can have either a beginning or an end. They ‘inform’ only about the most fundamental realities, about life and death, and they are pan of no significant dichotomies except perhaps that between life beginning and life...
“A stench beyond experience”
27 January is the day for everyone to remember the millions of people killed in the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. The Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On this day I take the liberty to...
Evocative power
“Odors are at once evocative and suggestive, redolent with significance.” ION M. LEWIS
Attention economy
“So we thought an odor couldn’t hurt” – MARTIN KIPPENBERGER
Temporary nature
“An everlasting fragrance is a paradox.” – THEODOR W. ADORNO
Smelling whiteness
“White privilege is not just ‘in the head.’ It also is ‘in’ the nose that smells, the back, neck, and other muscles that imperceptibly tighten with anxiety, and the eyes that see some but not all physical differences as significant.” – SHANNON SULLIVAN
Psychological irrelevance
“Taste, smell, as well as hunger, thirst, nausea, and other so-called ‘common’ sensations need not be touched on in this book, as almost nothing of psychological interest is known concerning them.” – WILLIAM JAMES
Rapport with the world
“Odours enable us to have an immediate and lively rapport with the world.” – CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
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