(2) ROOM OF THE HEAD OF THE DUTCH VOC

The Head of the VOC Visiting a Geisha

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This is a room with the Dutch smells that Maruyama geisha's were smelling in the island Dejima.

Smell 1: coffee

‘The VOC chief factor uses to drink this black drink every morning. It smells slightly burnt to me. He says it's made of beans. I thought it might be similar to Japanese barley tea, so I tasted it. It was terribly bitter, but I managed to swallow it. I have heard that an interpreter had to vomit after he'd drunk it for the first time.’

- Maruyama geisha commenting on the smell of coffee -

 

Smell 2: tobacco

‘For relaxation after eating and intercourse, the VOC chief factor prefers to inhale smoke from a pipe in which some kind of leaves are burned. The smoke fills the whole room. It smells. It smells somewhat sweet, bitter, and rather smoky, as when fallen autumn leaves are being burned.’

- Maruyama geisha commenting on the smell of tobacco -

 

Smell 3: meat

‘On special occasions, this food is often served at dinner. I asked the VOC chief factor where it comes from and he answered, to my surprise, that it comes from the stable at Dejima. He kindly offered me a piece but I could not accept it because I was afraid to receive bad karma by eating it. By the heart of Buddha, we are not allowed to eat four- legged animals.’

- Maruyama geisha commenting on the smell of meat -

AROMASCAPE OF SINGAPORE

- olfactory representation of the city -

workshop & installation (2011)

 

Aromascape of Singapore consists of two parts: a workshop and an exhibition.

In May 2009 and March 2010, Ueda conducted a 3-day workshop for Aromascape of Rotterdam at Willem de Kooning Art Academy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.  The workshop format will be adopted for the Singapore version of the project.

What do you smell if you walk around the city of Singapore?  Savoury fragrance from food stands and restaurants, green and fresh scent in a market, salty sea bleezes, or stinking garbage?  Singapore has an international reputation to be the clearnest city in the world.  In this project, participants are going to explore Singapore on the level of smell.

What is it that we are smelling, what does it make you imagine, what does it make you feel? This workshop will deal with these questions through a combination of lectures, hands-on workshops with fieldwork.  The result of the workshop will be used for the exhibition.

Some of the smells are extracted and exhibited. Just like a perfume shop, the visitors are free to touch them, open the bottles and smell them.  They are not perfumes for wearing, but for evoking your emotion and imagination.

[Relationship to Art and Education]

For Aromascape of Singapore, the relationship of the work to the theme can be seen as follows:  the purpose of working with art academy sudents is to raise the awareness for their sense of smell.  As these students will be in their late teens or early 20s, they have the maximum physical capability of smelling, because as you get old you can smell less.  They still have the clear memories from their youth that are attached very much to smell.  It's the perfect mement for them to learn about smell and totally different dimensions will open up in front of them.

 

 

WORKSHOP

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More documentations regarding the workshop

http://scent-lab.blogspot.com/search/label/%5BAROMASCAPE%20OF%20SINGAPORE%5D

 

EXHIBITION

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NO. 1: IXORA FLOWERS (AMARYLLIS SEAH HSUEH TING)

NO. 2: SUGARCANE (BRENDAN POH KAI JIE)

NO. 3: CHEESEBURGER (NG YI HUI MARY ANN)

NO. 4: NEWSPAPER (KANAKO FURUKAWA)

NO. 5: CEMENT (ORANJE)

NO. 6: RICE (AMARYLLIS SEAH HSUEH TING)

NO. 7: INDIAN INCENSE (SHERYL LAW)

NO. 8: BAK KUT TEH (HO BAOXIN)

NO. 9: BARBECUE (MACK ZHI FANG WENDY)

NO.10: CHAR KWAY TEOW (DEVA RAJ)

NO.11: COFFEE (YU DANYA)

NO.12: TAIWAN SAUSAGE (CHUA TIAN LI)

NO.13: GARAM CIGARETTES (HEMA LATA D/O VEERAMOHAN)

 

EXHIBITION DETAILS

5- 16 January 2011 (Mon-Sun 10am - 7pm Fri 10am - 9pm)

Glass Porch, Level 2, Singapore Art Museum

World Premie (Supported by Singapore Art Museum)

as a part of: Fringe Festival @ Singapore

http://www.singaporefringe.com/#/back-to-school/AROMASCAPE-OF-SINGAPORE-

relating workshop: 29 - 30 Dec 2010, 11am - 2pm at Singapore Art Museum

 

FIND THE SCENT OF TULIPS

(OR FIND CONFUSION...) 

permanent installation at Amsterdam Tulip Museum (2012)

 

Put your head in these tulips.  You will notice they smell of various bulbous flowers: Tulip, Hyacinth and Narcissus (Daffodil).  But which one carries the actual scent of tulips?

 

 

 

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Ordered by: Amsterdam Tulip Museum

Concept: Maki Ueda

Realization: Nezu Aymo Architect

Special thanks to Omega Ingredients (www.omegaingredients.co.uk)

THE JUICE OF WAR

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for “The Smell of War” exhibition

 
Title: The Juice of War – Hiroshima and Nagasaki –
 
Year: 2015

When I was a child, my bedroom contained a shelf of my mother’s books and one of these book was about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Inside I found photos of burned and rotten bodies. A field full of bodies that no longer look like bodies. It was in the high summer season so the bodies would quickly rot and flies laid eggs wherever they could.

The photos were so shocking to me that for nights I was afraid to go to sleep.  But I did not dare ask my mother to remove that book from my bedroom because it seemed rude to the victims. As I grew up I peeked into the book again and again, out of curiosity for the atomic bombings, and I realized that I was getting better in dealing with the fear. I ended up sleeping with that book until I left home at the age of 17.
 
I completely forgot about these pictures, but all of sudden, while I was thinking what to show here, I realized that they were the reason why I could not think anything else beside the smell of rotten flesh when I think of “the smell of war”.

In other words, working on this concept was digging into my memories.

Instruction:
Please put your head in a bowl. This smell was manually extracted from the juice of burned and rotten flesh.

 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The prime minister of Vlamish government also enjoyed the work at the opening.
 
 
At: The castle De Loving, Poperinge, Belgium. 

The Smell of War exhibition:
http://www.thesmellofwar.be

Curated by:  Peter de Coupere

 
[making]
 
 
This is a bizarre  story of purchasing meat of 20 euros at a supermarket, and made it rotten till it starts stinking for extracting the smell…  I am a bit ashamed to tell you the whole story but this is the real story behind this work.
 
When the curator Peter de Coupere asked me to participate in the exhibition with the theme of "the smell of war", I could not think of anything else than the smell of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That would be the case by most of Japanese.  We grew up with reading the cartoons "Hadashi no gen　はだしのゲン", with full of illustration of burned and rotten corps and maggot. Also it illustrates the bad odor.
 
 
The interface design:
 
 
 
Purchasing the parts for "katrol"
 
 
I sew the acrylic bowl myself because there was no company who could do this... it was quite some work.
 
 
I asked Peter, the organizer, for hanging the bowl with some instructions.
 
In Japan at my atelier: I bought pieces of meat at a local supermarket: checkin and pork, and burned them.
 
 
 
And dried them for 10 days in the sunlight.
 
 
 
 
This is the simulation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was high in the summer time when they got bombed, and the burned corps got rotten quickly.  Flies lay eggs and it stank terribly everywhere.
 
After 5 or 6 days they started to smell like a garbage.  Around the 10th day it started to stink sour, and this was the limit (also for my neighbor...).
 
I extracted a little to check the smell and turned out that it was missing the burned scent, so I burned them extra.
 
 
 
Then sliced them.  My cutting board was suddenly covered with the flies. It was like a horror movie. I couldn't inhale even, so I inhaled the fresh air 10meters away and ran to the cutting board, and repeated this.
 
 
After the extraction, I filterd it, but it also releases smells everywhere... I got headache from it.  If I would have continued this process I would have gotten depressed.
 
 
In my fridge is the extract and beer mixed up…it's safe as long as it's concealed :-)
 
 
 
 

OLFACTORY MEMORY GAME

installation / educational workshop (2010)

Untitled

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[venue] RAM Gallery, Rotterdam

[premier] March 15th, 2015

[exhibition period] 15/03/2015 - 26/04/2015

 

Please make pair with scents.

Just as Kodo, a Japanese olfactory game, I used all woody scents.

Cedarwood
Sandalwood
Styrax
Labdanum
 

 

 

 

 


  

 

 

  1. DINNER FOR THE MUTED SENSES
  2. LUNCH FOR THE MUTED SENSES
  3. OPEN SAUCES -TOKYO VERSION-
  4. OPEN SAUCES
  5. eau de parfum PERFECT JAPANESE WOMAN

Subcategories

SPACE INSTALLATIONS