Tag: narrative

DEW OF AFGHANISTAN

CONTRIBUTION TO mediamatic’s “Het parfum”for amsterdam

perfume art (2018)　
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DATE: 2018 (first release) , presented at Mediamatic semi-permanent
CONTEXT: Het Parfum
CURATOR: Mediamatic + Institute for Art and Olfaction

Het Parfum

The perfume Dew of Afghanistan is by olfactory artist Maki Ueda for Mediamatic’s sensuous game around city planning; Het Parfum. This interactive, social game explores the future of a much-debated area in Amsterdam’s city centre: the Navy Terrain. Thus with five different perfumers, five tailor-made fragrances give expression to various prospective visions of the city; one of which being social enterprises with refugees.

Why Social Enterprises with Refugees?

The overall mission of the Navy Terrain is to transform it from being an off-limits military terrain, to an accessible public place of research, recreation, and housing. The influx of refugees and immigrants in the recent years was the topic of debates and tension. Barriers have prevented groups of people from working, living, and socializing. The possibility of a social enterprise for refugees would bring a sense of inclusivity, education, and hospitality to those who need it.

Maki’s personal letter

It was in the year 2001. Having emigrated to The Netherlands, I was placed in an on-year full-time school to learn Dutch and social manners by government. The class consisted of immigrants who came for “love” to marry with The Dutch (like me), Turkish/Moroccan those came for economical purposes, and some refugees who came just to live “safe”.

I became friend with a refugee woman from Afghanistan. She was a university teacher in her own country and a “feminism activist”. She came to me and said “Maki, can you write about feminism of your own country for my feminism magazine?” 

Compared to Afghanistan, we Japanese women are highly educated, however we have to look and behave “cute”, therefore we lack the equal rights on the job market. “How to Become a Perfect Japanese Woman”, a manual I wrote, was the metaphor of these social pressures. (This actually has developed my early artwork “Eau de Parfum Perfect Japanese Woman”.)

I lost contact with her after the school, so imagined what she could have been doing afterwards, to survive in The Netherlands, and at the same time to help education for girls in Afghanistan.

After the temporary government was established there, some farmers started to grow rose and orange flowers to achieve essential oils. The oils are well valued in the western market. So in my imagination, she would be making perfumes solely made of materials from Afghanistan. We are happy to spend cents on this perfume, because it would bring a bright future for the families with girls. And we are happy to smell the nice fragrances. That’s a sort of model I would love to dream of. 

About Maki Ueda

Maki Ueda is an olfactory artist who explores the use of scent through interactive games and art installations. Through these projects local cultures are being explored and experienced by means of smell. In her project Aromatic Journey, the audience intuitively experiences essences of a culture by smelling. Often for Maki’s scent works, the results are not a perfume to wear, but to smell and trigger one’s memory and imagination.

Het Parfum is a collaboration between Mediamatic, The Institute for Art and Olfaction,Play the City, and the five perfumers: Spyros Drosopoulos, Maki Ueda, Ricardo Moya, Niklaus Mettler, and Alessandro Gualtieri. Het Parfum is part of Uitmarkt 2018 that is held around the Oosterdok area which involves the Navy Terrain.

Open-source perfume formula for Dew of Afghanistan

The formula for this perfume is open to all for you to recreate and build upon.

rose oil (Turkey)555
neroli (orange flower) oil275
labdanum 50%DPG170
 Total1000

Perfumer’s suggestion for alternative materials:
Rose oil (Turkey) → synthetic rose base (rose oil type)
Neroli (Orange Flower) oil → synthetic orange flower base

posters 1608 dragged 2

SWEATY-OILY SOUR-CHEESY JUICE

COLLABORATION WORK BY SHOTA YAMAUCHI AND MAKI UEDA

performance (2023)

Credit: Shota Yamauchi & Maki Ueda, Sweaty-oily Sour-cheesy Juice, 2023. 
Photo by Yuki Moriya. Courtesy of Kyoto Experiment.

DATE: October 7th, 2023
CONCEPT & DEVELOPMENT: Shota Yamauchi and Maki Ueda
CONTEXT: Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival 2023 (Kyoto Experiment)
VENUE: Kyoto E9, Kyoto Japan

Festival Information Page

 ‘The Witch of the Black Forest lives by feeding on people’s smells.

 If she eats the scent of a person, she can transform herself into that person.

The Witch’s pleasure is to embrace smells.

Eat the smell

Embracing the odor.

Caress the odor.’

– When the “Smell of Love” Intertwines with the Body –

In this play, the characters are “I,” “The Witch,” and “The Beast of Smell. The Witch and the Beast of Smell are the products of an image created by “I”. “You” or “Smell Slave” are the audience .  

The word “stink” is not used until the very end, and it is only in the third and final chapter, “Smell Paradise,” that the word “stink” is used. Here, “I” wake up from a dream. “I” turn “stink” into joy. “Stink” is a metaphor for being alive.

Atop the stage sits a device combining a glass distiller and a large water tank with thin tubes—it is a distillation machine for extracting the body odor of humans. Using the distiller, a number of performers transform body odors collected from audience members into a perfume which is then blended with various fragrances in the large water tank to create “smell juice”. The performers soak themselves in the smell juice, playing with the smell and attempting to become the “smell of love” itself. An extraordinary indescribable scent lingers in the air. As the work progresses, the scents in the theater gradually change. What smell will envelop the venue at the end?

Emerging contemporary media artist Shota Yamauchi works at the intersection of digital technology and physical expression; this new piece is his theater debut. In his 2021 Maihime, Yamauchi explored animalistic tendencies in a human’s sense of touch, depicting a pseudo-sexual encounter between a human and a virtual gorilla in virtual space. His curiosity has extended into the realm of “smell,” which is closely tied to emotion and memory, leading to a collaboration with olfactory artist Maki Ueda for this new work.

A paradise of smells is born from mixing the body odors collected from audience members and various “smells of love”. Through the performance, encounter a moment when human reason and animalistic nature intricately coexist through the sense of smell.

[THE LIST OF DIFFUSED SCENTS]
 Scene1: grass field
 Scene2: ransid sweat (by the wild animal)
 Scene3: blood (by the witch)
 Scene4: distilled collective sweat of the Smell Slaves (audience)