Mapping the Smellscape of Altermodern: Olfactory Art and Multidimentional Art History, 1960-2019

Jim Drobnick introduced the concept of “olfactocentrism” in response to the “by now commonplace critique of vision implicit in the term ocularcentrism.”[1] According to Drobnick, the predominance of visuality sarcastically serves as both the origin and the result of such commonplace critique. Through the centrism of olfaction, he granted olfaction enough significance to establish the relative individuality and variety of the sense of smell. Moreover, by quoting Heraclitus-“if everything were smoke, all perception would be by smell”[2]—he indicated that the goal of using the term olfactocentrism was, on the one hand, to highlight the olfactocentric realm, and on the other hand, to connect perception, smells, and thoughts.

In the discourse of modern and contemporary art, olfactory art explores areas beyond images and expands the scope of art history research. It provides more possibilities for people to consider the relationships between human senses, perception, and the environment, and to discover complex correlations of human, culture, and nature, which could hardly be investigated by other visual arts. This kind of artistic practices, according to relational aesthetics and altermodernity, “take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”[3]

The proposed research will investigate olfactory art and artists from 1960s to 2020. How has human recognition of the relationships between olfaction, nature, and human society been projected in artworks of different times? How did the above art practices influence the participants’ social and natural space? How does the perspective of olfaction contribute to the altermodern? How olfactory art, as special mediator, brings into play the concept of relational aesthetics in order to reflect on the smellscape in altermodern, in which viewers’ positions are replaced by participants and relations? Relational aesthetics, visual studies, ekphrasis studies, ecological aesthetics will be applied to the research.

When anti-globalization is fiercely fighting with globalization, alienation from the natural environment, and misunderstanding between different cultures and social values, have increased. Smellscape provides a new approach to represent the urban landscape. Different from traditional views of landscape as the product of visual activities, the landscape of smell is a fluid perceptual experience, which transfer formalized gaze into interaction. Relationships between different values, cultures, and understandings are thus stimulated in the process of constructing the smellscape, another representation of the fragmented environment.

Key words: Smells, smellscape, olfactory art, altermodern, relational aesthetics, ecology, environment