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»Kultur denken. Season 8 Episode 1: OLFAC with Silke Felber, Freda Fiala, Julia Ostwald
19.05.2026, 12:32
Introduction to the Symposium OLFAC –Sensing Across the Humanities, Sciences and Arts What does it mean to smell? What do odors enable us to sense, to know, to feel? How are perceptions, techniques, technologies, politics, and aesthetics of smell entangled with one another—and how might these relations be situated and theorized? At the heart of the symposium lies an exploration of the epistemic, affective, and political dimensions of olfaction— it asks what it means to think through smell. The OLFAC Symposium, held in December 2025 at the ifk in Vienna, was organized by Silke Felber, Freda Fiala, and Julia Ostwald as part of the ERC Consolidator Project OLFAC. More information is available at olfac.kunstuni-linz.at. Interviews/ Redaktion/ Moderation: Katharina Rahn Sound Editing: Paul Jones
»Kultur denken. Season 8 Episode 2: OLFAC with Brandon Woolf
19.05.2026, 12:31
Deodorizing das K-Wort Garlic’s notorious smell—lingering on our breath and at our tables—has historically been weaponized by colonial and hegemonic powers as a means of othering and oppression. What might olfaction, and odor more broadly, offer as a lens ( a nostril?) through which to interrogate socio-political relations? How and when do we abandon our fellow citizens and living things because of their odor? What do we risk by actually smelling each other? What stinks about our civic lives, and how could they smell more like Bärlauchsuppe? The OLFAC Symposium, held in December 2025 at the ifk in Vienna, was organized by Silke Felber, Freda Fiala, and Julia Ostwald as part of the ERC Consolidator Project OLFAC. More information is available at olfac.kunstuni-linz.at. Interviews/ Redaktion/ Moderation: Katharina Rahn Sound Editing: Paul Jones
»Kultur denken. Season 8 Episode 3: OLFAC with Hsuan L. Hsu
19.05.2026, 12:31
Olfactory Ecologies in the Past Conditional Sensory historians raise difficult questions about the viability of recovering or even reconstructing past scents and smellscapes. How might we understand odorous substances as a kind of material archive bearing traces of historical patterns of extraction, sensory labor, circulation, consumption, and interpretation while also intimating other possibilities: ecologies that exceed the world-making logics of racial and colonial capitalism? The OLFAC Symposium, held in December 2025 at the ifk in Vienna, was organized by Silke Felber, Freda Fiala, and Julia Ostwald as part of the ERC Consolidator Project OLFAC. More information is available at olfac.kunstuni-linz.at. Interviews/ Redaktion/ Moderation: Katharina Rahn Sound Editing: Paul Jones
»Kultur denken. Season 8 Episode 4: OLFAC with Gwenn-Aël Lynn and Dorothee King
19.05.2026, 12:31
Contested Space and Current Smells of Switzerland Gwenn-Aël Lynn is approaching a threshold at which it may enable the very wealthy to mine and settle beyond Earth. Yet in the absence of a breathable medium, olfactory molecules cannot reach the olfactory mucosa, and sound waves cannot travel. If Earth is exhausted, the life awaiting the few humans who remain on such inhospitable worlds would be marked by sensory deprivation—and, with it, the loss of many forms of pleasure. In her talk, Dorothee King seeks to identify contemporary Swiss smell-based signifiers of othering and inclusion in social relations, political structures, and identity politics, situating them within a complex sense of Swissness shaped by multilingualism and multiculturalism, evolving notions of immigration, distinctive geography, and urban–rural divides. The OLFAC Symposium, held in December 2025 at the ifk in Vienna, was organized by Silke Felber, Freda Fiala, and Julia Ostwald as part of the ERC Consolidator Project OLFAC. More information is available at olfac.kunstuni-linz.at. Interviews/ Redaktion/ Moderation: Katharina Rahn Sound Editing: Paul Jones
»Kultur denken. Season 7 Episode 1: There’s a Rumor Going Round… Gespräch mit Andreas Gehrlach
01.04.2026, 09:32
Gerüchte sind überall, sie begleiten uns jeden Tag und sind aber gleichzeitig wirksame Waffen in der ganz großen Politik. Die 7. Staffel von »Kultur denken« wurde von Jan Groos im Rahmen der Tagung »There’s a Rumor Going Round …« am ifk produziert, wo der Frage nachgegangen wurde, wie Gerüchte unser Leben steuern, wie sie wirken und vielleicht auch, was ihnen entgegengesetzt werden kann. Gerüchte sind Mittel von schwachen Gruppen, die sich dadurch selbst definieren und gegen stärkere durchsetzen können, und sie sind ebenso gefährlich für diese Gruppen, wenn sie von Institutionen oder von ›bullies‹ über sie in die Welt gesetzt wurden. Das Phänomen Gerücht erstreckt sich zwischen Klatsch, Fehlinformation und Verschwörungstheorien. Gerüchte sind unklare Phänomene, die sich als solche besonders gut für eine kulturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung eignen. Sie überlappen mit Fake News, Klatsch und Verschwörungstheorien und sind aber immer eine Art der Kommunikation, die uns im Alltag sehr begleitet und die Sozialität herstellt. Gleichzeitig sind Gerüchte aber immer wirksame und fast eigenständig agierende Mittel, um Institutionen und Menschen angreifen zu können und Autoritäten in Frage zu stellen.