with Pitchaya Ngamcharoen

Registration required via anmeldung@ngbk.de

Meeting point: Public Toilet, Thai Park / Preußenpark, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Google Co-ordinates: Toilette Preußenpark

Accessibility:
- The meeting point is approximately 3 minutes from Fehrbelliner Platz (U3/7) or Konstanzer Strasse (U7)
- The station has step-free access. https://wheelmap.org/way/4413796
- The route is wheelchair accessible.
- Bathrooms are available at the park. Please note this bathroom is not barrier-free.
-Rest-points made available en route.
- For all access questions contact: cruisingcurators@gmail.com

There’s a familiar look I’ve come to recognize—disdain, discomfort, or even disgust—whenever I open a jar of shrimp paste or let the scent of traditional Thai scented water linger on my clothes. These reactions have made me wonder: why are certain smells automatically deemed offensive, while others are accepted without question? Who decided that one scent is sophisticated and another is vulgar? Whose nose, exactly, holds the power to judge what is acceptable?

This project traces the path of Thai immigrant activities from the distant past through the present, and into a speculative future. By asking what smells existed along this route—then, now, and in the time to come—I invite you to actively use your nose to gather as much olfactory information about the area. We will start the walk by gathering at a spot next to a public toilet in Preußenpark, a former Thai Park, and head towards Barstraße. These sensory impressions will be documented, recomposed and shown alongside each other.

Pitchaya Ngamcharoen is a Thai artist based in the Netherlands. Her work focuses on the obscure area where different inhabitants overlap, with a particular focus on the crucial role that the sense of smell plays in this dynamic. She researches olfactory sense, investigates smells through the act of orientation and disorientation, territorial marking, and the process of being deterritorialized through the shifting of smells. In Western society, hegemony of vision and hearing is evident. To release herself from the despotic reign of the eyes, she refuses to give visuals a priority in my research and writing, however, never turns a blind eye. By bringing my nose to the forefront, she asserts that smell, scent, and olfaction are equally important in orienting oneself, claiming space (territory), and in the formation and transmission of communities. Her recent interest shifted to perfumery and the ability of smells to create an illusion of memories once the familiar smellscape became inaccessible.

Part of PATH 4: DECELERATE (on alternative temporalities)
August / October 2025
With contributions from Pitchaya Ngamcharoen, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, Jane Hwang, Lisa Klein, Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling, Gabriel Francisco Lemos

To decelerate is not to withdraw, but to attune differently. To call for a slower and more sensorially engaged way of being in the world. This Path explores how we might tune into other temporalities—beyond acceleration or slowness—to sense and shape the city differently. By disrupting ingrained patterns of speed, extractive systems, and social disconnection, alternative ways of moving with and through the city are imagined.

The contributions trace migrant space-making through the language of scent (Pitchaya Ngamcharoen); let children set the tempo of encounter (Kaspar Schmidt Mumm); reimagine a funeral parade with co-created objects to reflect on mortality and gender (Jane Hwang); offer tactile experiences of monuments for blind and visually impaired communities (Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling); and listen to forest ecologies through their underground fungal networks (Gabriel Francisco Lemos). Together, they invite us to attune to other rhythms and relations, and to imagine new ways of being in the world.