Datscha Radio is looking forward to welcome you on its second iteration of Night Gardening! As widely sorted as garden chores might be, depending on weather, the gardener’s mood, prevalent thriving plant species, surprise guests, and time of the day, our excursion into the world of “Frequencies and Fragrances” will follow no fixed time schedule. We’ll drift with the perfumes of the night.

Yet, as a general lead, here is some information about the artists of that night and their olfactory involvements (alphabetical order!).

Caroline McMillan: Aura:maton. Live performance.

“Aura:maton is an internet-connected, olfactory wearable tech dress. In an age of vast desert landscape, endless concrete towers, tunnels and grime, memories exist without experience, data without an object. All data content is mediated through shiny, yet somewhat clunky technologies.
The dancer’s brainwave activity prompts a perfume accord, a de-extinction of lost rain released algorithmically in collaboration with AI for infinite variations of physical memory. Submerged in memories of petrichor, biological traces of the scent of rain after a long period of dry weather.”

McMillan’s research interests include artificial intelligence, soft robotics, bio-computation, technofeminism and haute couture textile techniques. Taking a philosophical approach, intuitive interactions with technology are derived from nature.

Christy Spackman: The Scent of Water. With Helen Thein.
A visit to the Datscha Garden features the probing of local waters. Please keep a sample of your local tap water at hand.  
Christy Spackman is currently Assistant Professor, Art/Science Nexus, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, @ASU. Studying the taste of water, how sensory science shapes consumer perception, and the creation of tastelessness. Fermenter of things.

 Gabi Schaffner: La Lichen Parfumée. With Julia Drouhin. A weird story and a weirder sound piece. Based on several failed experiments in the transposition of plant’s chemical ingredients into random melody, lost and found field recordings and the sound and scents of a waffle iron. (Lan: F)

Hans Kellett/Gabi Schaffner: 10 S|Cents Poems
Hand Kellet is an artist and poet from New Zealand, based in Berlin. In 2017 he was “Poet in Residence” at the Datscha Radio Festival “Plots and Prophecies.

Why not sing poems when the theme is the “translation” of scent waves  into sound waves? The title of the series is derived from a genre of street poetry where poets create verses on the fly for little money. The New Zealand poet and artist Hans Kellett rendered them ingeniously musical.

Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Helena Otto: To the Belly and Back

Jasmina Al-Qaisi with Helena Otto take synesthesia to the belly and back, inspecting different fragrances of the night garden by fabricating an imaginary of the darkness around plants and women working with plants. In between days, at night, two girls meet to tell each other secret mingling and mixing love for food with other bodily forms of love. Burning, from sweating to smoking, burning from erasure to the unforgettable is a starting point for a fair tales and giving noise to the nose. For NACHTGÄRTNERN [NIGHT GARDENING] at Datscha Radio, Al-Qaisi and Otto will burn, smell, murmur, rhyme and dine ON AIR.

Helen Thein: Coordination, Logistics, Culinary Support, Documentation, Press and Social Media. She’ll join Tina-Marie in her floral explorations.

Julia Drouhin: Lent her voice to “La Lichen Parfumée”. She is a radio artist from Tasmania, born in France.

Kate Donovan: Radio artist Kate Donovan will explore the human-generated electromagnetic frequencies in the garden, using various devices to make them audible.

Katt Hernandez: brings her violin to the garden
Katt Hernandez is a maverick violinist, composer and improviser. One of her compositions was also featured in our “Night of the Nightingales” on the 30^th of April this year.

Mobile Radio (Knut Aufermann & Sarah Washington): Flur-Funk: eine olfaktorische Reise durch die Extreme des Moselweins.
Mobile Radio was established as a travelling project to build upon our work across Europe in the fields of radio and sound art which had arisen during the three years that we helped to establish the London art radio station Resonance 104.4FM.
For this night, six bottles of finest Mosel wines will challenge our sensual and vocabulary – interspersed with short interviews  with the viniculturists themselves.

Niki Matita will present two pieces as well as a hand-picked selection of songs about olfactory sensations.

Smelling A Dead Body
Ein Interview von Niki Matita mit Nicolle Schatborn von der “Küche des Unerwünschten Tieres” entstand in ihrer Küche auf dem Gelände der Ateliersiedlung Nieuw en Meer in Amsterdam während sie eine Brandgans ausnahm.

Olfactophobia
Ein assoziatives Hörstück von Niki Matita über die unangenehmen Seiten des Riechens zur Komposition “Mes Odeurs Préférées“ der kanadischen Komponisting Joane Hétu (mit freundlicher Genehmigung)

Tiger Stangl and Tina-Marie Friedrich (allgirls international berlin art)
Greatest thanks is owed to Tiger Stangl who is hosting Datscha Radio in her garden. Apart from being a 200 percent gardener and a graphic artist, she has been curating together with Ms Friedrich the allgirls gallery since 1992.

Tina-Marie will act as the garden’s smell explorer, probing the nocturnal scents and vibes of plants and place and render her sensations to our willing audience.

Open Call Artists: “Garden Scents”

Ana Berkenhoff
Gabriela & Cristian Fierbinteanu
Gayil Nalls
Hakan Lidbo
Ian Stenhouse
Kontaktofon
Sjoerd Martens
Sylvain Souklaye

We are very proud that both Soundart Radio and Resonance Extra will take over our night of the Frequencies and Fragrances from sunset of the 8th of August till sunrise of the 9th of August.

What is the scent of water like? Fresh? Or sweet? Is its (mostly) clear visual appearance tricking us into believing that there cannot be such a thing as a distinctive smell to it? Christy Spackman was our guest at the Datscha and we spent a delightful afternoon with different probes of water, a cake and organic fertilizer… which certainly is also a kind of water.

Christy Spackman is studying the taste of water, how sensory science shapes consumer perception, and the creation of tastelessness. She is a professor at the Arizona State University and came to Berlin this summer to do research at the ZZF (Leibniz Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam). Since she’s leaving by the end of July, we decided to prepone our talk

Did you know that – quite like wine tasting – water also developes a “head space” if covered for some time with a lid? Or have you ever thought about the sensual qualities of “safe” water.

Our undaunted self-test took us as far as sipping organic fertilizer, one of the strongest (evil) smelling liquids you can fabricate in a garden. Today’s sample was made from comfrey and horsetail… it stank like hell, but the taste? – I won’t tell you know. Wait until the 8th of August: We’ll broadcast “The Scent of Water” on Datscha Radio’s second iteration of Night Gardening with its focus on “Frequencies and Fragrances”, starting at sunset, 8:47 pm.

Please have your glasses of water samples (tap water, mineral waters, healing waters) ready by then, and don’t forget to put a lid on the glass.