During this playful exploration of scent-culture, we dive into the world of sexy (or unsexy) body smells partly inspired by Patrick Süskind's 'Perfume: The Story of a Murderer'. Together with Saskia Wilson Brown and Attic Lab's perfumers Thijs Elich and Renske van Vroonhoven, we will smell different aromatic molecules associated with body parts, tincture material taken from the participants' armpits and extract the scent of a sexy redhead. Note: some underwear will be involved.
During Art Olfaction Amsterdam, each Monday evening we organise different explorations into the outer reaches of scent culture. From social games to technology workshops, anything goes in the playhouse. Expect eclecticism, experimentation and plenty of aromatic adventures.
All the way from Los Angeles with her Institute for Art Olfaction team, Saskia will lead this Playhouse edition among many other workshops within this summer’s Art Olfaction Amsterdam programme. This is not the first time Mediamatic and Saskia have worked together as Saskia, as IAO helped us explore animal scents in an Odorama edition and the classifying systems for scent in our Communicating Scent workshop.
Thijs Elich and Renske van Vroonhoven of Attic Lab
Having come from different art disciplines of painting, performance, and photography, Thijs and Renske of Attic Lab explores scent culture through different possible forms. To do so, they set to create olfactory projects with actors from different disciplines. They are both perfumers who will help us in this Playhouse edition to explore the methods of perfumery.
In the Sex S(m)ells playhouse, we will start by blind smelling molecules associated with the human and animal body. The group will split up to take on one of three exercises attempting to extract aroma from human materials. One of which will be from the material taken from the participants' armpits. In this playhouse you will also learn the traditional extraction method of enfleurage on used underwear. Finally, we will make an attempt to recreate the extraction of aroma described in Patrick Süskind's 'Perfume: Story of a Murderer,' using a (live) human subject - an experiment that will continue through the course of our time in Amsterdam.
Are you interested to find out more about the relationship between scent and sexuality? Check out what we wrote about Smell Dating and our previous Odorama edition on Scent and Scentsuality.
Information
Playhouse - Sex S(m)ells Monday 30 July, 19:00 - 21:00 Tickets: Regular: €15 | Students / Artists: €10 | Door Regular: €17.50 | Door Students/Artists €15 Mediamatic Biotoop, Dijksgracht 6, Amsterdam
