Some “art” really does stink. The New York Post writes:
It’s political dis-scent: An olfactory artist has transported the stench of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park to a Staten Island art gallery.
‘The Smell of a Critical Moment,’ which opened yesterday at Doorways on Van Duzer Street, features 99 T-shirts that protesters wore for a week straight, without washing them.
Artist Gayil Nalls distributed new white tees to OWSers and on Jan. 12 collected the body-odor-drenched shirts to capture the revolution’s essence.
The park’s putrid smell became a major health concern before police raided the encampment in November.
Alternate title: “The Stench of Failure.”
The gathering of Occupy Wall Streetiana in the name of art has its roots in a collection effort by the Smithsonian in October, which dispatched emissaries to haul in “signs and ephemera from Occupy Wall Street and Occupy D.C. for potential exhibitions about the movement.”
As for the Staten Island exhibit, a Facebook page by someone using the name “Doorway,” explains that
[t]his exhibition is concerned with the conjunctions where art, olfaction and politics intertwine. With this work, Gayil Nalls argues that the sense of collective experience has distinct olfactory aesthetics. While predominately imperceptible, the sense of smell allows for a binding power contributing to the sensus communis, or the power of the people, demonstrating that the sociocultural Zeitgeist or mood of this movement has an olfactory truth. Visitors will experience chemosensory messages of Occupy Wall Street protestors from tee shirts worn by 99 participants: physical Occupiers, working group members and solidarity marchers.
And here I would have thought that the conjunction between olfaction and politics emanating daily from the District of Columbia was enough for anyone.
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