I had so much fun being a guest lecturer/visiting artist in Cara Hagan‘s graduate theater class at the New School last month. I brought my boxes of smells and told them sometimes more, sometimes less about what they were and how I used them in my scent performances, such as Becoming Blind (as a Bat). I also gave them prompts mostly having to do with translating the scent into language–a story, a scene, a poem…
I warned them that if they decided to use movement, they would have to do a double translation: smell into movement, then movement into words as AD for me. (They rocked it!) I explained that I blindfolded my audiences–not to simulate blindness—because blindness is a skill set as much as it’s an identity, but just to have people pay attention to their so-called lesser senses.
Cara had told me that the course is primarily about collaboration, so for each exercise I had them break into groups of two, three, or four—new configurations each time. They busted out some really amazing stuff! I was so impressed by their quick and brilliant sketches that were all the things: funny, smart, ingenious, surprising, poignant, interactive, multisensory… I was intrigued by how often each group decided to ask us the audience to close our eyes for their mini performances. At the end I asked them about it, and they felt like it helped them focus and concentrate on story. They were great at doing AD on the fly.
Description from Be My AI: The image shows a group of eleven people posing together in a room. They are all smiling and appear to be happy. Some are standing while others are kneeling in front. The room has a plain background with some shelves and a few items visible. The people are dressed casually, and one person is holding a white cane, indicating they might be visually impaired. In the foreground, there is a man kneeling with headphones around his neck, wearing a gray shirt and jeans. Another person is wearing a red leather jacket and sitting on the floor with their hand on their chin. The group seems to be diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity.
It was a completely heartening experience in a week that felt otherwise pretty desolate. I was however armed at the start of class with a Toni Morrison quote that had been shared by poet and essayist John Lee Clark in his Protactile google group first thing Wednesday morning. It sparked an immediate feeling of possibility as soon as I read it. I shared it at the top of class, and now I share it with you…
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Multi-Sensory Design Tanden Visit
In October, I visited a very different, but no less fun, class in multisensory design led by Lauren Race at NYU’s Tanden School of Engineering. I shared my scented/tactile tokens and we had lots of laughs about the good, the bad, and the weird!
The image shows a group of six people sitting around a wooden table in a room that appears to be a collaborative workspace or a classroom. They are engaged in a discussion or activity. (Actually, we’re passing and sniffing and discussing my scented/tactile tokens!) There are laptops and other electronic devices on the table, along with some cables and a power strip. One person is handing something to another across the table. In the background, there are shelves with purple storage boxes and a 3D printer on top. A clock is visible on the wall, showing the time as approximately 10:10 (actually it would have been around 7PM). The room has a modern and organized appearance.
So those were my first and second guest lectures on smell and olfaction! I look forward to more. Meanwhile, here’s a clip from Becoming Blind (as a Bat) at Olfactory Art Keller…