Sissel Tolaas – an alphabet for the nose
website jar-online.net
Sissel Tolaas „an alphabet for the nose“ featured in journal for artistic research (jar)
„Smell [..] is a highly elusive phenomenon. Odours, unlike colors, for instance, cannot be named – at least not in European languages. ‘It smells like…‘, we have to say when describing an odour, groping to express our smell experience by means of metaphors. Nor can odours be recorded: there is no effective way of either capturing scents or storing them over time. In the realm of olfaction, we must make do with descriptions and recollections.“ (Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The cultural history of smell (UK: Routledge, 1994), p.3)
FEAR/CHEES = BACTERIA/SMELL (work in progress), 2011
Sissel Tolaas in collaboration with Christina Agapakis
We live in a biological world completely surrounded by rich communities of micro-organisms, but also in a cultural world that emphasizes total antisepsis. „Sanitized and pasteurised for your protection“ is the antiseptic slogan of our times that slowly leads us to sensory death. Although it goes without saying that not all smells and bacteria can be pleasant, the consequences of our hyper-sanitation could be that we eventually engage with none at all. Smells, bacteria, and bacteria that produce smells, surround us all the time. Chemical detection is an ancient biological communication tool used by bacteria and animals alike. Smells and bacteria are a crucial component in defining, understanding, and orienting ourselves within any given environment.
