Smells of Racism

In the organizer's words:

Smells of Racism

Immersive performance lecture by Sandra Chatterjee & Friends

as part of the International Weeks against Racism 2026

What does racism smell like? From everyday prejudices to Immanuel Kant's philosophical remarks on the relationship between smell and 'race', the connection between racism and smell has a long Western tradition.

Have we ever wondered if we detect the hidden smell of sweat, blood, tears and systematic historical exploitation of people when we drink our coffee or tea or cook with our beloved spices? Have we ever asked a street cleaner how he is marginalized every day in his own life for cleaning up our trash?

In the performance Smells of Racism , we dive into these stories about smell and racism together: with music, dance and smells.
And we are looking for antidotes to everyday racism: whether more empathy (rose) or more reassurance (lavender), more anger (asafoetida) or foresight (laurel) - the antidotes and countermeasures are as diverse as the racist situations we encounter in everyday life.
Together with the audience, we create an incense that symbolically dispels the evil spirit of racism. An ongoing process!

We smell incense mixtures created with audience members from past performances in Munich, Vienna and Oldenburg and put together a new incense mixture - for the next audience.

By and with Sandra Chatterjee, Arko Mukhaerjee and Kanishka Sarkar | Technical direction Friedrich Günther | Illustrations Avirup Basu | Research and Outside Eye Theresa Seraphin | Philosophical input André Grahle

Sandra Chatterjee, choreographer and researcher in the fields of culture & performance and dance studies, is interested in direct interaction with the audience. Her current projects include choreographic work with smells(Smells of Racism / SWEAT - Smells of Labour), Noor Inayat Khan - Performance Miniatures (2023), Dance with the Stars #1 (2025), and the organization of CHAKKARs - Moving Interventions. For 2020-2022 she was selected as an artist of the international exchange and production platform Freischwimmen.

Arko Mukhaerjee, a versatile singer and musician in the independent Indian folk music scene, sings folk songs from Europe, the African continent, Latin America and the South Asian subcontinent as well as Sufi, blues, soul and various 'tribal' music forms from India and Bengal.

Kanishka Sarkar is a founding member of Cactus, one of the first 'vernacular' Bengali pop/rock bands, in which he played for eleven years - with over 2000 concerts and four record deals with EMI India. Kanishka lives and works in Berlin, where he produces music together with Ralf Denker.