The Smell of Sunshine: Smellwalks and the Re-Conceptualisation of smell

Louisa Allen

doi:10.7577/rerm.5534

Authors

Louisa Allen University of Auckland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2995-4417

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.5534

Keywords:

Smellwalks, sensory methodology, multisensory, intra-action, Barad, COVID-19, Pandemic

Abstract

This paper explores the experience of trialling smellwalks during the pandemic for use in educational contexts. It details how these walks were designed and mobilised in a small coastal town in Aotearoa-New Zealand to explore how the pandemic transformed life at a daily and local level. The paper has two aims which entail a theoretical examination of smellwalk methodology. Firstly, to rethink a multisensory conceptualisation of smell where human senses are understood as distinct but overlapping. And secondly, to theorise the act of smelling as unbounded and involving non-humans. A series of research moments are examined to demonstrate how smelling involves a multisensory experience that emerges with/through the material landscape. Barad’s (2007) notion of intra-action is drawn upon to re-conceptualise the idea of smell as led by the nose and reconfigure it as an indeterminate bodily experience.

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