Electric Eclectics Festival

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Canada. Here's some information about I'm going to do.

Electric-Eclectics Festival, Meaford, Canada on 01-03.08.2008.

Aromatic Journey #3 Canada
Maki Ueda

[content]
Maki Ueda will research and find interesting local scents, and extract them on-site. The goal is to find the local and original scents; the scent of daily life, food, drinks, materials, persons, and environment. Because of the evaporating character of the smell molecules, scents cannot be
preserved very long, and therefore it's preferable to work local. Maki Ueda has been making a series of the perfume works under the name “Aromatic Journey” (http://www.ueda.nl/aromatic_journey1). These works focus on the local, extraordinary scents. The local culture is being explored and experienced by means of scent. The results are not a perfume to wear, but to smell and trigger one's imagination.

[extraction during the festival]
Maki Ueda will extract the scents of the chosen subject in a mini-laboratory installed in a caravan. The visitors can visit the caravan and observe the extraction process, and off course they can smell the scents-in-progress.

[exhibition in the museum]
The extracted scents will be exhibited in the museum. The visitors can open the bottles and smell them. Furthermore they can dip a paper-strip in a bottle and bring the strip back home.

upcoming events

Electric-Eclectics Festival, Meaford, Canada on 01-03.08.2008.

Drop a line (performance), Kaaitheater, Brussels, Belgium on 30 & 31.08.2008.

Camera Japan Festival, Roodkapje, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 12.09.2008. - 26.10.2008

Media art event, Garaj, Istanbul, Turkey on 20.09.2008. talk on 21.09.2008

body odor collection of Stasi Museum

Last weekend I was in Berlin so I've visited Stasi Museum. The reason is that I've made the fragrance connected to what they exhibit. The fragrance was "the body odor of Susanne whose body odor got preserved by Stasi" made for the exhibition If there ever was.

Body Odour
On December 28, 1989, a slim young woman named Susanne Böden was handing out leaf lets in East Berlin with her little sister. The leaf lets promoted free speech for citizens of the Deutsche Democratic Republic. Shortly after she started handing them out, Susanne was arrested by the
Stasi, or East German secret police. She stood trial at Stasi headquarters in East Berlin and was served with a caution. Before being released, the Stasi gave her a square of fabric to wipe against the back of her neck. This fabric was then kept by the Stasi in a sealed jar with her name on it.

A persons body odour is as distinctive and traceable as a fingerprint. The Stasi tracked the movements of suspected dissenters with trained sniffer dogs. To get the scent of their suspects, the Stasi employed a variety of methods such as breaking into apartments and stealing dirty clothes or sitting suspects in a heated room for questioning. The Stasi would then save a patch of fabric from this chair’s upholstery that had absorbed the suspect's body odour.

The Berlin Wall fell within months of Susanne's trial. During the ensuing celebrations Stasi Headquarters were ransacked. Inside a small room at the headquarters, revellers found hundreds of jars labelled with people's names and stuffed with bits of fabric.
text by Robert Blackson

The front side of Stasi headquarter


The smell jars
















Now let's see the other exhibitions.

meeting room


communication room


toilet


There's no clear sign nor entrance to this court, so I had to walk around the block many times.


Stasi headquarter is in the house nr. 1.
All the buildings were somehow related governmental buildings.

Emio Greco | PC

I've seen the performance Purgatorio (premier) by Emio Greco | PC at Holland Festival. My project of extracting the dancers' sweat was done for this dance company.


In the ctalogue/magazine Purgatorio my perfume works "7 smells" is exclusively introduced.


7 smells, 33 euro. For ordering please contact EG | PC.



During the performance I was guessing the person for the each smell, but that totally failed. The smell does not correspond to how the person looks. Clear.

a review on the dancers' scents

This is a review by someone who came to the presentation (written in Dutch)
[review]

Body Odor as the Outer Skin - finished -

Here follows the documentation of the project "The Body Odor as the Outer Skin" that I've been working these 2 months.

(previous post concerning this project)

The project was developed in commission by the dance company EG| PC. The dancers' sweat from the rehearsals was all extracted and put in the bottle as a perfume. All the 7 bottles contain the different body odor from the different person. It's the perfume for smelling rather than wearing.


(Draining the clothes. After that the new one is being stuffed in the liquid, so that the scent gets more and more concentrated.)


(Distilling afterwards helps more concentration)


(Filtering)




(Making the balance between the scents, so that all smell equally strong)


(Making the balance of the top/middle/base note of the scent. When the top note is missing, I add the raw liquid. It's the important process using the nose.)


(Checking how they smell with the mini bottles)


(Bottling)


(each 200 bottles)


(7 scents in total)


(1400 bottles are made in the end)

These perfumes are meant to be sold during the Holland Festival , in occasion of the dance performance by EG | PC.

exhibition - if there ever was

For the opening of the exhibition If there ever was
I've just been to Sunderland, U.K.













Everyone was enthusiastic about the exhibition.
BBC review

I'm very happy haw it's installed. I've never seen before such an art exhibition with no artifacts!