Some time
ago I was standing in my yoga studio, kindly asking other yoginis to provide me
with a sample of their sweat. I handed each of them a small cloth to wear under
their clothes somewhere during the hot yoga class. All these samples have become
part of the exhibition Metascent at the Medical Museion, which I visited some days ago.
Our sense
of smell influences different important human choices. From what kinds of
foods and drinks we consume, to our choice of mate or our sexuality. The
special sensory cells mediating human olfaction, located in the nasal cavity,
are the only nerve cells that re-generates through out the entire life. I’m a “smelling
person” and often identify a perfume or shampoo worn by people I pass on
the street; distinguish between the different interesting odors in the metro,
or notice the increased intensity of odors after a good downpour of rain. I
think it’s because this particular sense creates strong associations and is
closely linked to memories. It’s like a sweet connection to forgotten times and
places. The sense of smell never sleeps, but is always there triggering
connections to forgotten memories, effecting our mood and behavior in the moment.
Metascent is an interactive exhibition,
facilitating experiences of scents through four installations. One installation
consists of around three hundred sweat samples in little jars. Each jar is tagged with a
note, telling a bit about how the cloth has been worn and by whom. Putting the
sweat into a sealed glass jar intensifies its odor, and as a visitor you are
welcome to smell the different samples. Somehow it feels intimate to smell
another person’s scent even though the action takes place in their absence and
in a science museum.
This simple method for reinforcing scents
was used discretely by the Stasi to track people, e.g. by
placing a small cloth on the chair during interrogations.
A second installation allows the visitor
to smell three synthetically made scents like sweat, bad breath and the breath from a diabetes patient, captured on
mirrors with nanotechnology. These human scents, at once pleasant and repulsive, seriously activate the sense of smell and bring attention to the different
layers, or notes, of the scents. A table nearby invites the visitor to share
personal experiences and memories of scents, constituting a more reflecting
perspective.
Four cones with substituted urine scent from patients with
different metabolic disorders make up the fourth installation. The potency of
these samples illustrates how our bodily scents are determined by our metabolism
and how they effectively reflects our health and conditions.
Metascent is based on a PhD research
fellowship by sociologist Anette Stenslund
and investigates how scents can be exhibited, in particular metabolic scents.
My visit to
Metascent reactivated an awareness of
scents; both in a sensory and in a more cognitive manner. The metabolic scents
exhibited actually shook my sensory system with their intensity, and
made me think of the importance of our body’s scents. Today, our relation to
scents often focus on eliminating or concealing the unpleasant smells of our
bodies. By using perfumed products (or other less allergenic stuff) when
cleaning our homes, our clothes, our bodies, we beautify ourselves and our
surroundings. But sometimes our bodily scents contain a beauty, a value
or an importance that I would like to be able to sense.
aroma • aura • bouquet • essence • flavor • fragrance • incense • odor •
perfume • savor • scent • smell • spice • stench • stink • trace • trail • whiff
Illustration of human olfactory system by Anne Kathrine Baastrup.
