Sensescape

floating narratives

Abstract

This study addresses the sense of smell as an articulator and mediator of/in the construction process of places and urban narratives. The artists Peter de Cupere and Hilda Kozári and, respectively, the works Smoke cloud (2013-2016) and Air, Smell of Helsinki, Budapest and Paris (2003), are shown as poetic actions in which the smell acts as a tactical element for data inference and the perception of spatial-temporal relations. To theoretically contextualize olfaction as a social and cultural phenomenon, we refer to Classen et al. (1994) and Porteous (1990), while the artistic narratives presented provoke an exercise transgressive to visual hegemony. Thus, the smell is assumed as a phenomenal mode of activation of the urban space, recognizing its imprecision in the evocations and associations with landscapes, time and memory.