CTRL-N: Sensory Overload
Sensepecting |ˈsɛnspɛktɪŋ|- a counter to ocularcentrism; the practice of inspecting one's environment in all its multiplicity using all our senses, beyond the dominance of sight
Sensepecting is about making place for our other senses apart from vision. It is about learning to approach life with caution and attentiveness. Through the example of Katendrecht, we invite people to take on different perspectives, by using their senses in various ways to experience and understand the neighbourhood, its stories and how it changed over time.
CTRL-N: Sensory Overload is the seventh edition of the annual CTRL-N event hosted by the Grand Challenges Honours Programme of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
During this interdisciplinary programme, students engaged with the city and challenged the ordinary form of sensing by constantly taking on alternative perspectives.
CTRL-N: Sensory Overload takes place on the 12th of June in Verhalenhuis Belvédère, Katendrecht. The doors at Verhalenhuis will open at 10:30, please pre-register yourself down below.
Hopefully, this will just be your start of sensepecting Katendrecht or your local neighbourhood. We are looking forward to sensepecting alongside you.
Artwork & Graphic Design by Studio Braincell; Carin Bejenaru
Friday JUNE 12,
Verhalenhuis Belvédère
(Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
Natural intelligence
10:45-11:30h
Katendrecht has shifted from a working, industrial port to a carefully curated urban landscape. In this transformation, materials have changed too. Raw, organic, and weathered surfaces replaced by synthetic, polished substitutes.
Blindfolded, you will encounter textures and scents drawn from the neighborhood – from grass and wood to plastic and cleaning products. Without relying on your sight, will you be able to distinguish the natural from the synthetic?
This sensory experience invites you to reflect on how we perceive the city today, and whether, in changing our environment, we might also be losing touch with nature itself.
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Chiara, Milena, Micol
Absent Archive
Rotterdam's Katendrecht was once Europe's first Chinatown. Today, almost nothing of that world remains - no buildings, no street names, no monuments. But what about the smells?
Twelve mahjong tiles. Four historical periods. Dried herbs, opium resin, harbor rope, rice steam, cheap lager, wet concrete.
This is a handmade olfactory archive of a community that was systematically dismantled and of the silence that replaced it. Smell is the sense most tightly linked to memory. It is also the one that leaves no archive.
What does erasure smell like? What does it smell like when it's finished?
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Nikolaj, Sakshi, Inaara, Dimitris
Untangling Katendrecht through Spices
10:45-11:30h
Every neighbourhood is a complex system of knots, but how do we begin to untangle them?
By unravelling the complex threads making up Katendrecht’s past and modern identities, this project transforms colonial spice routes and local memories into a living, multisensory archive.
So gather up close and smell the Timut pepper! Taste some duqqa. Touch the Cha plu leaf. Pick up a card and uncover what Spices can tell us about the neighbourhood.
The card deck will guide us through the session, and we'll paint our histories with Spices and Maas water - mapping emotions, olfactory triggers, and memories directly onto the neighbourhood's geography.
You too are part of Katendrecht's history. Expect to untangle complex narratives and map new futures together through collective & relational art.
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Natalia, Sofia, Arsshiya
Childhood memories embedded in Katendrecht art
10:45-11:30h
Two young boys from Katendrecht sat down for a portrait in front of Dolf Henkes, a Katendrecht native, 65 years ago.
Dolf Henkes grew up in a Katendrecht different from the one we see today.
Come explore Katendrecht like it is 1941 again through the lens of a young boy.
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Maksym, Kaiden
Exploring culture through food
10:45-11:30h
Food. The one thing that carries cultures and memories timelessly. Entire civilisations have been built on trading just a handful of precious culinary components.
Your senses will be isolated and heightened to find the answer to this one burning question :
What can one simple ingredient reveal about your past and the history of your home?
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Dev Pal, Maria Castro Contreras
The smell of gentrification through time
11:45-12:30h
Katendrecht has changed a lot over the years, but how does that actually feel to the people who lived through it? In this experience, you'll hear two stories from very different residents of the neighbourhood, one who has called it home for decades and one who just arrived. While you listen, you'll smell fragrances made from their memories accompanied by visual elements. Smell brings the past back before you even have time to think. Come and find out what this part of Rotterdam used to be, and what it's becoming.
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Olena, Alicja, Rupali, Ruxandra
Microbial attunement
11:45-12:30h
For a short time, we slow down and pay attention to usually invisible things: bacteria and wild yeast. Instead of viewing bread as a finished supermarket product, we see it as a process. Bacteria and wild yeast break down sugars, produce acids, change the smell and help the bread rise.
Our final product can be understood as a flavour map of Katendrecht. The bread carries traces of the neighbourhood's culture.
We invite you to reflect:
Can microbes carry a memory of the place?
Does slowing down change what you notice?
What does Katendrecht taste like?
What happens when we treat bacteria as collaborators?
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Andrey, Antonina, Maya
Plants of Katendrecht
11:45-12:30h
Plants of Katendrecht: Mapping Plant Intelligence in the Patchy Anthropocene
Step into Katendrecht through the eyes of its plants.
This sensory mode of attention invites you to explore the peninsula as a living network of human and more-than-human relationships. Through illustrated maps, plant cards, and guided reflection, you will learn how flowers and urban vegetation adapt to polluted soil, construction, wind, and movement, and how they quietly reshape the spaces around us.
What stories are rooted beneath the pavement? What does a dandelion know about this neighbourhood?
Discover how plants remember, resist, and reshape the changing cityscape of Katendrecht.
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Noemi , Louise
Inner Cartography: Katendrecht from Head to Toe
11:45-12:30h
Can you sense Katendrecht? Experience the neighbourhood as a living body, not just a p͓̽l͓̽a͓̽c͓̽e͓̽ on the map. Explore how streets and spaces connect with you, awakening different feelings and sensations within. Feel the tingling of your muscles or the way the sun feels on the back of your neck. The city is not only around us, it moves throughus, it shapes us, and becomes part of how we feel. K͓̽a͓̽t͓̽e͓̽n͓̽d͓̽r͓̽e͓̽c͓̽h͓̽t͓̽ ͓̽h͓̽a͓̽s͓̽ ͓̽s͓̽e͓̽c͓̽r͓̽e͓̽t͓̽s͓̽: it comes alive in the palms of your hands. Navigate different routes of Katendrecht with us and experience the sensations that come with each space…
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Rita Pereira, Sofya Petrova, Marissa Desouza, Emilia Bech
Parallel walks, partial views
12:45-13:30h
10:45-11:30h
In this immersive audio experience, you follow a story while taking a short tour through Katendrecht. Through sound, reflection, and personal storytelling, the tour invites you to discover a neighbourhood through someone else’s narrative. As a voice guides you through the walk, insights on memory, transformation, and sense-making begin to reveal hidden tensions and histories. Moving beyond a traditional city tour, we invite you to reflect on how people shape places, and how, in turn, places shape the people who become part of them
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Juna Ruinen, Zenna van den Broeke, Danas Kuzminas
The faces and phases of migration
12:45-13:30h
Migration has many different faces. For many, it is not a smooth transition born from a voluntary choice or ambition, but a turbulent journey dictated by necessity along a road of sacrifice and survival.
Along with the different faces of migration, also come different phases; a temporal dimension. one that cannot be replicated or imagined; times of need, times of prosper and times of fear.
We invite you to step outside your own reality and experience a fraction of the hardships, uncertainties, and emotional weight that shape the path of migration
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Vasilisa, Benjamin, Wouter
A Taste That Speaks
12:45-13:30h
Behind the carefully curated facades of Rotterdam’s Deliplein lies another geography ; one carried through taste, memory, and migration. At Delibreak, you are invited to eat a Sicilian arancini while listening to an immersive soundscape built from the stories and memories of the restaurant’s Italian owners. As sounds of kitchens, streets, and distant atmospheres unfold, the arancini becomes more than food: it becomes a trace of centuries of cultural movement and exchange. This sensory experience asks what hidden histories exist beneath the surfaces of the places and traditions we think we know.
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Anna Dudas-Hjelms, Jacopo Sainati, Michela Castiglione, Sofia Di Gennaro
Smelling Colors: A Blended Map of Katendrecht
12:45-13:30h
A strange scent drifts through the streets: saltwater, fresh bread, dust, metal, something unfamiliar. Have you ever wondered how others perceive the reality surrounding us? What about yourself? Buckle up, and let’s take a glimpse into a different approach to experiencing Katendrecht through smell transposed in color!
Would you take up the challenge of seeing smell?
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère (Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam-Katendrecht)
By: Juliette Decamp, Bianca Vasile