Explore the old town of Bern by nose: How does Bern smell today? What stories do the fragrant and the foul smells in the city tell? How does smell permeate life in the city?
The Urban Scent Walk explores the old town of Bern as a smellscape and an olfactory exhibition: informative, discursive, performative. The guided walk opens up unfamiliar facets in spaces of everyday life. The Situationists spoke of “dérive”, meaning the exploration of cities by wandering through varied environments: natural scents, cloying designer fragrances, fresh site-specific interventions, and cosmetic urban smells.
Odors are hardly ever specifically noted, although they interact with each breath: in a direct manner, volatile molecules produce the moods that characterize the atmosphere of the city. “Smells make it possible to identify locations and to identify with places,” says the philosopher Gernot Böhme. In other words, the nose brings experience that the eyes, mouth and ears are shut out of.
The Urban Scent Walk brings awareness to the sense of smell and expanded perception. The walks are aimed both at locals and interested visitors of Bern who want to explore the city from new angles.
A production of Scent Culture Institute (SCI). The Scent Culture Institute is an interdisciplinary platform for research and education on the role of olfaction in culture, business and society.
The Urban Scent Walk originated in the research projects, “Fragrance Knowledge” and “New Scents in Action”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Bern University of Arts and the Faculty of Business at the Bern University of Applied Sciences.
Date & Time:
September 13 6:30 pm
September 14 2:00 pm
September 16 6:30 pm
September 19 6:30 pm
September 20 2:00 pm
Start-End Place: Schlachthaus Theater, Bern
Language: German
(English on 14 September, 2:00 pm)
Duration: 60 minutes
Entry: 25.- / 20.-
Concept & Implementation:
Claus Noppeney, Ashraf Osman, Andreas Wilhelm, Marta Kwiatkowski, and others.
Hosted By: University of the Arts Bern and Bern Biennale
More information:
http://www.biennale-bern.ch/2014/Programm/Scent+Culture+Institute
scent art .net 