»Kultur denken. Season 8 Episode 4: OLFAC with Gwenn-Aël Lynn and Dorothee King

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