Cities are scents: Acre is the scent of marine iodine and spices; Haifa, the scent of pine and rumpled sheets; Moscow, the scent of vodka on ice; Cairo, the scent of mango and ginger; Beirut, the scent of sun, sea, smoke, and lemon; Paris, the scent of fresh bread, cheese, and the derivatives of intrigue; Damascus, the scent of jasmine and dried fruits; Tunis, the scent of night musk and salt; and Rabat is the scent of henna, incense, and honey. And every city not known for its scent is not worth mentioning. And lands of exile have a common scent, which is that of longing for elsewhere… A scent remembering another, a scent of intermittent breaths, emotional, leading you like a tourist map that’s been used too often to lead to the scent of the first place. Scent is a memory and a sunset. And sunset, here, is beauty’s rebuke to the foreigner.” Mahmoud Darwish, “In the Presence of Absence” excerpt (translated by Ashraf Osman)
THE PROJECT Exile seems to be all around these days: the refugee crisis rages on in Europe, while Turkey hosts the largest population of Syrian refugees in the world, and Lebanon the highest per capita anywhere. This is nothing new to the Middle East, or the world. But beyond the policies and the politics, beyond the numbers and the blame game, beyond the sensational headlines and tragic pictures, is a human experience. And in the face of it all, art often stands helpless. Despite the best intentions of socially engaged artists, given the scale of the tragedy, art is rendered at best symbolic.
With this project, we acknowledge the limited capacity of art, while insisting on the significance of that capacity: to enlighten, to empathize, and to remind us of the fragility and humanity of the experience. And what human endeavors are more evanescent and humane than poetry and scent? They tap into the most delicate in our core, acknowledging that sometimes, when we feel there isn’t much we can do, some of the lightest and seemingly inconsequential of our efforts may be the most transcendent. As Aeschylus stated, “I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.�
THE PROJECT
overview «Scents of Exile» is an olfactory art project that investigates the memory, identity and nostalgia of scents associated with cities and places no longer accessible. It takes as its point of departure the above text by prominent Arab poet Mahmoud Darwish. The project aims to: • raise awareness of olfactory art as an emerging area of contemporary artistic practice • explore the boundaries and areas of overlap between the practices of perfumery and olfactory art, as well as those between olfactory and nonolfactory arts. “Scents of Exile” is a traveling exhibition divided into two curated sections, each comprised of 9 works by selected artists and perfumers invited to contribute work on the same theme, in response to the text. Each section is presented in more detail in subsequent parts of this document.
structure «Scents of Exile» aims to create a dynamic perspective of scent as an art form by exploring how a single brief could be interpreted by artists from distinct but related disciplines: the established practices of perfumery and nonolfactory art, and the emerging practice of olfactory art in between. While perfumery is traditionally focused on accessible and accepted norms of beauty, the 21st century saw a surge in experimental, edgy and controversial scents that remained niche but expanded the creative possibilities of fragrance making, and freed the art from the traditional restrictions of consumerist culture. Those fragrances remain outside commercial distribution shelves, but make a statement of what “could be”. On the other hand, olfactory art as an emerging discipline has been exploring scent as a nascent medium in contemporary art making. While the art’s form is primarily installations, scent is often the main component and source of the message and dialogue in the produced artwork.
Bringing together perfumery and olfactory art in the same platform is another level of inquiry over the possibilities and expressions of scent as a primary sensory experience: how its form influences its semiotics; how the traditionally consumer-oriented could shed off this skin and become a counterpart to installation and “museum” art. It also blurs the boundaries between the ethereal scent and the physical form, transcending both in the process.
Section 1: Perfumery 9 fragrances by Givaudan perfumers in sufficiently separated smelling stations. Space Requirement: ~ 120 sqm Section 2: Olfactory Art 9 commissioned works by 9 olfactory artists from Europe and the US, where the practices of olfactory art are currently concentrated. Space Requirement: ~ 360 sqm
1. PERFUMERY
givaudan
9 cities with 9 specific scent compositions are mentioned in the text. Those will inspire and guide the creation of 9 fragrances through the intervention of 9 established perfumers. Individual perfumers are to pick one (or more) of the cities/notes mentioned in the text according to their own preferences and work on actualizing them. Alternatively, they might choose to work with the theme more broadly, creating scent concepts that concretize their idea of exile, nostalgia and separation. We hope the notes will lead to compositions that are contemporary and rather experimental. The creative tension in this brief goes beyond the notes, and explores the antagonism of distance (intrinsic to exile) and the aspect of “existing on one’s own skin”. The scent becomes a reminder of a place, much like a picture or paraphernalia. While our hope is that the fragrances would be commercialized at a later stage if they prove to be “wearable” enough, they are to be initially developed for the purpose of the exhibition, and are not specifically intended to be mass crowdpleasers.
For scent design, we are proud to partner exclusively with Givaudan, the world-leading perfume house that’s behind many of the greatest fragrances in the history of perfumery. Besides tackling the fragrance briefs, Givaudan’s perfumers in Paris, New York and Dubai can collaborate with the olfactory artists on designing the scent component of the exhibition’s installations. This collaboration fits within the company’s overall creative strategy of accompanying creators as they emerge, and of promoting young talents and initiatives which allow perfumers to get a feel for zeitgeist and its evolution. It is an exercise to understand and capture the universe of artists in order to get inspired by creativity in its rawest expression.
2. OLFACTORY ART For the sake of the exhibition, we have chosen a number of established and up-and-coming olfactory artists. The brief to them is to develop artwork or installations that are inspired from the text or built on theme more broadly, so that we can trace a direct parallel of interpretation between the fragrances and the resulting artworks. The artists are offered the opportunity to work with perfumers from Givaudan, if they wish, to develop scents for their artwork We are currently in talks with the olfactory artists in the following section.
WHO WE ARE
Ashraf Osman
Raafat Hamze
Ashraf Osman is an art curator, architect, and founder-director of ARTINECT, a consultancy that connects art and people, virtually and physically. He is co-founder of the Scent Culture Institute in Switzerland, a think-tank that focuses on the sense of smell in culture, business, and society. He is also an advisor of the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles and a judge of the Experimental Category of its Art and Olfaction Awards. Ashraf did his postgraduate curatorial studies (Master of Advanced Studies) at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) where he focused on socially-engaged and olfactory art. He is author of a brief academic survey of olfactory art in the 20th century, as well as ScentArt.net, a resource for scent art in the 21st century. Before that, Ashraf worked for more than 10 years as an architect in the US and taught Interdisciplinary Design Foundations at Philadelphia University. He is a Registered Architect both in the US and Lebanon.
In 2012, Raafat Hamze founded and became the lead strategist of Syndicate, a location-free network of collaborators in communication, design and innovation. This came as a culmination of more than 10 years of experience in various disciplines of Marketing in companies like Siemens Product Visionaries (trend hunting for product development), Sony Electronics (marketing communications and consumer research), Fawaz Alhokair (brand identity development) and Solidere (online communications). With Syndicate, Raafat leads long-term projects, like the design and semiotics integration for Roadie Tuner, winner at the 2010 edition of Stars Of Science, as well as various advertising and communication assignments for Hempel Paints. Raafat lived, studied and worked in The Netherlands, Japan, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Beirut where he is currently based.
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