Smell≠Bound
For The Institute for Art and Olfaction, Los Angeles
I created fragrances and traveled with them roughly alongside the U.S.-Mexico border from Texas to Los Angeles.
The scents were mixed from counterfeit Terre d'Hermès perfume I bought in downtown Los Angeles and creosote, a plant available near the river, the international boundary. Terre means Earth, and Hermes represents the God of boundaries, roads, thieves, and commerce.
I suspended the scent in hundreds of dime bags of fluorescent goo — not exactly liquid and not exactly solid — put them in a case I built, and took it through interior border and security checkpoints. Finally, sharing them in Los Angeles at the Biennial Scent Fair. I wrote an accompanying document called Smell≠Bound.
The Institute for Art and Olfaction produced the event, and I’m grateful for their trust and including me. As well, for their new library of writing about scent. Truly a treasure organization.
Like scientists, artists can abandon the ordinary world of experience, the realm of regular sense perception. The senses have only catalytic function, since they are bound by physical limitations. Artists can step over the border and deal with the haunting relationships that involve us in the veil between subject and object and between observer and observed. This is the premise, to me, of why and how scent, art, light, sculpture and borders connect.
Image: IAO
Image: IAO
