Smell Moves
Smell Moves is an interactive publication encouraging experiments in noticing, identifying and writing about the scents that populate your life. A series of prompts, instructions and reflections to respond to are dotted between visual & written works from artists James Epps, Jan Uprichard and Megan Rudden. Smell Moves becomes your own personal smellscape; a personalised journal of the smells that impact the way you live. The publication was launched at a sold-out event, held in collaboration with A Library of Olfactive Material, Glasgow.
There is radicality in paying close attention to your sense of smell and the way that smells impact you physically and emotionally; smells do a great deal for shaping presence and becoming attuned to that opens layers of experience. Words, too, have immense power. No matter who uses them or in what context, there is substance and texture in them. Smell Moves has been curated as a location for people and their words to meet and collaborate, to keep in touch with the experiences of scent that make each life unique.
Blank prompts, instructions and reflections were formed as a result of a smell-writing workshop I held for the Glasgow-based artists, James Epps and Megan Rudden, at A Library of Olfactive Material. Significant elements of their own works were then also realised as part of the conversations which arose from taking part in these same activities. Part of the workshop included smelling some chemical compounds of particular smells we had identified as significant to each of us, including Geosmin (earthy dampness), Guiacol (wooden, smoky) and 3 Hexanol (fresh grass, raw aubergine). As we each inhaled, the smells vibrating through our noses, we were experiencing layers of entanglement. The smell molecules became our own.
Writing is not a replacement for experiencing scent just as it isn’t a replacement for listening to a sound or touching an object, but it provides a valuable additional object both alongside scents and separate from them.
Layout, typesetting and design: Rose Bache
Printing: Scottish Print
Distribution: Peregrine Coast Press
