Sissel Tolaas
Scent
From 1990-
Indeterminate
6,730 molecules
For fifteen to twenty years, Sissel Tolaas has been designing scents, pursuing a forensics of identity through the language of odour. Every morning, she trains in her archive of over 6,730 molecules as one might do yoga or read the newspaper, spending several hours to educate and keep her nose limber. Selections from Tolaas' archive with rotate in and out of ASAP.
View Scent
Scent
2008
Variable
Sweat molecules and wall paint
What is the smell of fear?
I developed a small device that these guys carried around with them as if it was a talisman. This device extracted the sweat at the moment they had an attack. We agreed that their original sweat would be sent to me overnight, and we reproduced it immediately through chemicals. The research was just astonishing – by smelling their sweat, I could build up a kind of conceptual image about who they were, what kind of surroundings they were living in, and why they were afraid. The reasons for their phobia were always other bodies and constellations of bodies – humanity, human beings.
-From Sissel Tolaas, Excerpted from mono.kultur, Spring 2010