Ambivalent Domesticities: Exploring the Unfolding and Obscuring of Alternative Social Imaginaries in Laurent Mareschal’s Beiti

Abstract

Laurent Mareschal's site-specific installation Beiti is situated ambivalently in our imaginations of Israel/Palestine. Its geometric tile carpet, consisting of herbs and spices, effectuate multisensory experiences of the domestic, a place of memory, family and shared tastes and scents, but also of conflict and dispossession. Adopting a Heideggerian framework, this study will examine the formative hold of power (Macht) over cultures, histories and politics in the region and explore how Beiti simultaneously withdraws and submits to this. Olfactory art theory will help conceptualise how the artwork affects audiences corporeally, through its scents, and how this draws them into various temporal experiences; from the cyclical alternations of nature to personal memories as well as interrupted histories. The article concludes with a strategy to salvage the de-escalatory potential of Beiti's multiple temporal entanglements.