Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Milan perform ‘smelly’ experiments with their Scentbar
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Art Central
Wednesday, October 3 - Saturday, October 6
More in: Visual Arts
As part of M:ST (Mountain Standard Time Festival) 3.5, from October 3 to 6, artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Milan invite the public to witness their performance piece Scentbar. The artists create composite scents based on the results of personal interviews and their pseudo-scientific and pseudo-spa expertise.
In a M:ST 3.5 press release for the performance, we are warned: “However, comfort, cleanliness and luxury are undermined by the promotional video of malodourous disasters, and by the product itself that draws upon ambivalent memory-evoking contemporary scents such as rental car and light industry.” The word Scentbar may associate a combination of both spa and confectionary, or both high-end services and mass-produced sweets. Combined with and conditioned by a client-interview process (in which the interviewed are asked about their memories, fears, desires and self-image), the impersonally mass-produced, commodity identity of perfume mingles with subjective “personal reading,” analysis and the regenerative pitch of the spa.
Scentbar may share similarities with Dempsey and Millan’s language-based work, in which a theme of rewriting personal and cultural history becomes focused on communication and how people are shaped by the language they use. On the artists’ website, an earlier piece called Looking Backward 3000, described as “science fiction,” involved a character who spoke the archaic language of TV drama and talk-shows. Dempsey and Millan have also worked with the theme of the body (both in terms of female, lesbian and cultural bodies) and a rewriting of the body. A piece called Arborite Housedress is described on the artists' website as exploring "the domestic architecture" of the 1950s as a form of armour against fears and fantasies. How does Scentbar explore themes of the body, particularly the body using (or being used by) a product such as perfume?
In today’s self-improvement context of accessible aromatherapies and drugstore perfumeries, what are the scents of contemporary realities, and of contemporary bodies? In an article called “The Smell Report” from The Social Issues Research Centre website, the colloquial use of “smell” is humorously explained as trapped by its own default: “to give praise, we must specify that (people) ‘smell good’ or ‘smell nice.’ Smells are guilty until proven innocent.” Pre-18th century perfume was used to enhance the natural body’s odour, “the same function as the corsets which were used to accentuate and exaggerate the female form.” Alongside mechanical noses able to identify everything from disease to the “stages of the female menstrual cycle,” the article mentions some of the new synthetic scent technologies seemingly taking flight for a privileged client who will be able to access products such as a “new fragrance for men (that) allegedly includes… ‘essence of racing car.’” Students and office workers alike will be familiar with smell’s role in contemporary maladies such as sick building syndrome, and “The Smell Report” suggests this is based upon an “olfactory survival reflex.” The article also suggests that temperament may affect sensitivity to smell. Smell’s link to often associative, emotional memory may be caused by “the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion.” Preference to smell can violate the apparently social role of smell, as favourite scents may include the sour and the unpleasant, while the sweetest smells may only link to bad memories.
In an account of seeing a 2003 Scentbar performance in Ontario’s Karen Schreiber Gallery, writer Daniel Baird asks: "Does the concept of scent elude the often grotesque forms of commodification that have so devalued the power of images?" Compared to other senses, smell has a reputation of being the most fickle and most sneaky, yet the most direct link to memory. Smell has long been linked to narratives of gender and social roles, and for artists Dempsey and Millan, rewriting these narratives includes utilizing the spa as a container for subversive potential. In an article on the artists in Border Crossings, Robert Enright offers: “Millan and Dempsey view all their work as political and as a result they are particularly attracted to forms of popular culture which have broad audience potential. Once they inhabit the form, the content is up for grabs, and then the real subversion begins.”
Scentbar may allow participants a particularly intimate experience of the otherwise more passive nature of viewing performance art, while at the same time playing with the contemporary culture of self-identification through commodity ritual. Nicole Burisch, M:ST 3.5’s interim festival co-ordinator, suggests that the work may also explore “the unease and awkwardness that we feel around these things: knowing (but often ignoring) that these unique boutique experiences and products probably won't be as fulfilling as we want them to be, and that the repercussions of our lifestyles are inherently tied to uncomfortable realities.” Scentbar has usually been performed in a gallery space but for this performance will be set within Calgary’s downtown Art Central space. “Art Central represents a particular crossover of art and commerce that will act as a backdrop for the work and I think (will) inspire some dialogue between the work and the space,” says Burisch. “In comfortable and/or awkward ways.”
