Five Holes: reminiSCENT

Performance
September 18–21, 2003

Curated by Jim Drobnick and Paul Couillard

ARTISTS
Cheli Nighttraveller
Clara Ursitti
Helen Paris & Leslie Hill
Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

reminiSCENT, is the third instalment in FADO’s performance series, Five Holes, which examines the significance of the body and the senses. 


PROGRAMME

Pull Up To The Bumper by Clara Ursitti
Street intervention: September 18, no set times
Exhibition and limo tour: September 20 @ 6:00-9:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 302-25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

Pull Up To The Bumper, by Clara Ursitti, occurs in a white stretch limousine, the acme of celebrity display and mobile partying. For selected performance-goers and chance passers-by, an intimate conversation and olfactory experience awaits as they cruise the streets of Toronto. The limo’s sensuous, private interior, complete with refreshments and other luxury comforts, is a chamber redolent with the spirit of seduction. In this gender reversal, a woman holds the balance of wealth, status and sexual agency as the artist inquires into the dynamics of stardom and urban prowling.


On The Scent by Helen Paris & Leslie Hill (with guest artist Lois Weaver)
September 19–21, please register to experience this performance
168 Simcoe Street, Toronto

On The Scent by Helen Paris and Leslie Hill, in collaboration with Lois Weaver, reconfigures an apartment with olfactory performances and interventions. Visitors journey through a series of visceral encounters that infuse the residence with heightened experiential potential. A trail of scents leads to stories and confessions wafting unexpectedly through the space and secreted away in compartments and corners. Reflecting upon the significance of smell in everyday life, this aromatized environment intensifies the role scent plays in identity, emotion, place and memory. Each performance lasts 30 minutes and is performed for 2 audience members. Please reserve your spot, there are a maximum of 40 participant spots in total.


Untitled by Cheli Nighttraveller
September 20 @ 12:00pm
Berczy Park, Front Street, Toronto

Cheli Nighttraveller’s untitled performance addresses racism operating at the level of the body and hygiene. Since the era of first contact, the so-called “odour of the other” has served as a pernicious means by which European colonizers stigmatized First Nations peoples. Reflecting at the edge of a fountain in Berczy Park, Nighttraveller recalls an episode in the life of Quannah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches, who once caused a stir by bathing in a public fountain. The artist will satirically confront the misconceived but persistent fiction of “cultural stench.”


The Seven Scents by Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
September 20–21 @ 12:00pm–4:00pm
Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

Inspired by the legendary exoticism and adventure of The Seven Seas, Millie Chen and Evelyn Von Michalofski provide an occasion for virtual travel with The Seven Scents. Cruise ship deck chair recliners face the waters of Lake Ontario and invite bystanders to lie back, relax, listen to a series of soundscapes and inhale the ambiance of distant locales. Like spa therapists, the artists will gently facilitate each lounger’s sensorial reverie. Distilling together sound and scent, romance and reality, the piece evocatively contemplates the fantasies of escape and the economic actualities of tourism.


Scentbar by Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan
September 20 @ 6:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 302-25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s Scentbar promises unique, personalized scents scientifically tailored to each client’s memories, anxieties and desires. Trained technicians will tally the answers to visitors’ scent-questionnaires and concoct custom-made perfumes in their laboratory cum parfumerie. Drawing from a top-secret odour palette, their potions transcend the use of scent for fashion or flirtation. These one-of-a-kind distillations connect the wearer intimately and olfactively to the complexities of the contemporary world—they are fragrances for troubled times.


Artists


Documentation


Writing


Engagements


Series


BOOKS & OTHER EPHEMERA

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer