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Thu, Mar 28, 2024

smelldistributorThe Temporary Stedelijk at the Stedelijk Museum - Amsterdam

Lecture and debat

Thursday September 23th 2010 at 1900h

Participating persons:

Peter de Cupere (kunstenaar)
Jim Drobnick (Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto)
Caro Verbeek (kunsthistoricus and curator)
Yolanda van Ede (Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam)
Adam Tasi (Smartnose, Amsterdam)
Valentina Hulsman (kunstenaar)
Sue Corke (kunstenaar)
Circle of Senses (Aroma DJ/VJ).

More info: www.stedelijk.nl

These evenings present a playful, challenging and topical mix of presentations and interventions by a variety of artists, designers, curators and scholars.

The combination of smell and art may seem an unexpected one, yet many contemporary artists incorporate smell, scent and perfume in their work. In the exhibition Monumentalism: History and National Identity in Contemporary Art, Job Koelewijn presents an olfactory art work. In addition, the Stedelijk Museum has many more art works in its collection that use the sensory experience of smell, such as The Beanery (1965) by Edward Kienholz.

Smell It! explores olfactory dimensions in contemporary art by presenting recent developments in smell culture accompanied by an actual experience of scent. Artists Peter de Cupere, Sue Corke/Hagen Betzwieser and Valentina Hulsman – in a lecture, an art work and an olfactory performance respectively – present their work. Theorist Jim Drobnick, an authority in the field of smell and contemporary culture, examines the practice of distillation in contemporary olfactory art. He connects this with the artistic search for new strategies to address the aesthetic and political dimensions of urban experience.

The evening was concluded by a round table discussion with Peter de Cupere, Jim Drobnick, anthropologist Yolanda van Ede and Adam Tasi of SmartNose, moderated by olfactory art historian Caro Verbeek. The two lectures were merged with eye- and nose-catching visuals and smells, provided by Aroma Jockey Dr. Perfume and visual artist VJ ED (AromaVisuals).

Program

19.00 Introduction by Caro Verbeek (art historian)

Performance by Valentina Hulsman (artist)

19.15 Lecture by Jim Drobnick (Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Canada)
(accompanied by perfume and visuals, created by AromaVisuals)

19.55 Break

20.15 Lecture by Peter de Cupere (artist)

(accompanied by perfume and visuals, created by AromaVisuals)

20.55 Round table discussion with Peter de Cupere, Jim Drobnick, Yolanda van Ede (University of Amsterdam) and Adam Tasi (SmartNose), moderated by Caro Verbeek, followed by questions from the audience

21.45 End of the evening

Participants

AromaVisuals guides you through the realm of senses. After years of experience in their respective fields, Aroma Jockey Dr. Perfume and Visual artist VJ ED join forces. AromaVisuals designs customary performances, in which scent, visual and digital art form the basis. AromaVisuals connects different sensory experiences in and creates an accessible and complete experience. The notion that everything in this world is connected, is the basic thought behind every performance.

Sue Corke
is a visual artist and one half of partnership We Colonised The Moon, with Hagen Betzweiser. She is currently artist in residence at the ACME Firestation in London. She worked and exhibited at Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier and Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. Her work often concerns the construction and representation of spaces where an immediate physical presence is impossible but can be experienced through sensory interaction. Corke is currently exhibiting at Edinburgh Printmaker's Gallery in Scotland where she is represented as an artist.

Peter De Cupere is an artist based in Mortsel-Antwerp and Paris. By exploiting the subjective, associative impact of smells, in combination with visual images, he generates a kind of meta-sensory experience that goes beyond purely seeing or smelling. De Cupere paints with scents, produces olfactory objects, soap paintings and sculptures, creates video- and live performances, makes three-dimensional drawings and builds poetic smell installations.

Jim Drobnick is a critic, curator and Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at the Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Canada. He has published on the visual arts, performance, and post-media practices in recent anthologies such as Art, History and the Senses (2010) and Senses and the City (2010), and the journals Angelaki, High Performance, Parachute, Performance Research, and The Senses & Society. His books include Aural Cultures (2004) and The Smell Culture Reader (2006), and an upcoming book on smell in contemporary art. He is a co-founder of DisplayCult, a curatorial collaborative that has recently produced the projects and exhibitions Odor Limits (2008), MetroSonics (2009) and NIGHTSENSE (2009).

Yolanda van Ede
is assistant professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Her expertise is in qualitative methodology, in addition to which she also developed a course on the anthropology of the senses. Next to a number of articles on the senses, she also finished a textbook, Sensuous Anthropology, and applies sensory analysis in her own research. Her current research project focuses on flamenco dance in Japan.

When DJ Eddy de Clerq asked aromotherapist Valentina Hulsman in 1994 to provoke the senses of the visitors of his club “Testlab” by spreading perfumes and smell into the room, she became the first Aroma Jockey in the world. Since then, Hulsman is invited from all over the world to provide presentations, VIP parties, theater plays, art, etc. with an extra olfactory dimension. In 1995 Hulsman started her own consultancy in scent in Amsterdam, and designed olfactory compositions for such diverse professions and institutions as hairdressers, nursing homes, shops, offices, fairs, etc. Since 2005 she, under the banner of House of Hulsman, creates a completely natural product line for body, mind and soul, and gives trainings and olfactory consultations.

Adam Tasi is the general manager of SmartNose, a company specialized in scent and taste marketing. He conducted research at ING Bank concerning the effects of olfactorial stimuli on the perceived service level of customers. Now at SmartNose he leads scent marketing related projects for organizations like Unilever, Sara Lee and Kraft, but also for non-profit organizations like the CliniClowns and Rijkswaterstaat. Core businesses of SmartNose include fragrance in print (f.e. the Smell it! Boomerang card with scratch-and-sniff), scent dispersion, scented POS material and taste marketing.

Caro Verbeek
is an art historian specialized in art and the senses. She graduated at the University of Amsterdam on the topics of scent and touch in relation to art, constructing a more sensual history of art of the 20th and 21st century. She lectures on olfactory and tactile art accompanied by non-visual illustrations. Verbeek has worked for the Stedelijk Museum for several years. She co-curates en moderates the Smell It! @ The Temporary Stedelijk evening.

General coordination: Hendrik Folkerts, assistance by Inge Essing (intern Education department)

Location: presentations in auditorium