"Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is."
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Vibeke Mascini
Vibeke Mascini is a writer and visual artist researching cases in which cultural systems falter and regularities shake. Looking into elements within the history of science, landscape and language, Mascini considers formal agreements that are made tangible through object or definition. For this Odorama edition she will tell about the different application possibilities of whales.
David Deijmann
David Deijmann is a historian and philosopher that uses food as a lens to the world and in that way is interested in food culture, food ethics and sustainability. David is currently working as a chef and gardener at Choux Restaurant in Amsterdam. David will surprise us with something we can taste, made with real Ambergris!
Frank Bloem
Frank Bloem is an artist who uses scent as his primary medium and a regular at Mediamatic. He is a Gerrit Rietveld Fine Arts alumni and has shifted his focus to Olfactory based works in the summer of 2016. He teaches the workshop Introduction to Smell to educate people's noses and to show composing scent as an art form. Frank has a real fondness of Ambergris and will explain the origin and usage of this product.
Lizzie Marx
Lizzie Marx is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Rijksmuseum where she explores the visual representations of smell in the Dutch Golden Age. She will be sharing her research on the imagery of beached whales decaying on the Dutch coast. Artists portrayed the stench through various methods, including onlookers managing the smell using scented accessories infused with ambergris, a by-product of the very same animal whose smell they were trying to block out.
Arthur Oosterbaan
Arthur Oosterbaan will come to speak on behalf of Ecomare. He will tell more about what ambergris is and where does it come from and about the astonishing amount of Ambergris that came to shore on Texel in December 2012...
Information
Odorama: Ambergris
Thursday 14th of March
Program starts at 20.00
Mediamatic Biotoop, Dijksgracht 6, Amsterdam
Tickets: €7,50 pre-sale | €10 door | Students €5.25 (Incl. €1 Administration fee)
The programme of this evening will be in English.