2004-ongoing

“Sculpture of bought and gifted perfume paraphernalia in a Fluxus Art style. Type of work for some of these images is simply ‘Performance with sculpture and audience’. Materials: bought and gifted perfume paraphernalia… collected perfume materials… books and ephemera related to perfume. Dimensions: 500 bottles big, and countless miniature perfumes and samples… it can be installed partially or as one piece and has no fixed form… so the dimensions are variable… over the years I have used parts of it in installations and smaller performances. Link to inventory: https://www.fragrantica.com/me...” – SMW.

“Do you see this piece as an archive in any way?” – AC. “Yes I see it as an archive. As we discussed, I would buy perfume almost before buying food or paying rent. Robin and I have a system built up over many years which is as messy as my work in general, where I can afford to buy perfume without having to forgo rent or food etc. I spend time thinking about perfumes I want/need to acquire, but the decision to buy happens really in a kind of obsessive trance. Art supplies, on the other hand: I feel guilty when I buy a tube of 10 euro acrylic paint or an expensive linen pre-stretched canvas or nice paper (my favourite art paper is 80 gram A4 white printer paper). So perfume is definitely a priority. I see the perfume collection as a research archive. I buy miniature perfumes and samples of rare and expensive things just to have a little bit as reference. I suppose I imagine I am training my nose with some unknown future purpose. To work together with a perfumer on launching a perfume perhaps, or just to know how to navigate the dizzying array of perfumes out there, the field is really exploding now especially in niche markets. There is a writer and academic named Ann Cvetkovich who wrote a book called ‘An Archive of Feelings’ or something like that (I prefer not to look it up because she was a bit weird with me when we met once) and I could call my perfume collection that: ‘An Archive of Feelings’ as a misunderstanding of her title. I love titles and misunderstanding them. So it’s all for research and that’s what makes me so passionate about it, you have this bottle of juice/perfume that has 1000 sprays in it or so and you can just keep re-experiencing it over and over in different days, in different moods, at different times, in different circumstances. It’s always slightly different. What I also notice is that when I test two perfumes side by side, like one on the back of each hand, then my perception of both sharpens. Like a camera lens focusing. An archive is a collection and a collection is an archive. I am a bit of a hoarder with the idea that all these perfumes will someday find their way into public in a way where they can be shared and appreciated on a wider scale. There is a funny or unique reverence that people seem to have for perfume, the bottles, evocative names, colours of liquids and the smells themselves. There is something mysterious and alchemical about them. I have noticed that even when I install the collection and people cannot touch or interact with the perfumes that they still have this reverence for what they represent. They are like placeholders or personalities, each collected and bottled liquid represents something mysterious and invisible, and I think this fascinates people. Some people have the idea that perfume gives them headaches, or that they are allergic etc. This is sometimes true, but often it is a misconception about what perfume is and what it does. There is no such thing as an uninteresting perfume. A smell, no matter how tawdry, when it is composed as trying to be pleasing, interesting, strange, evocative… .there’s something so life affirming there. Perfume can be experienced in passing (like Olivia Giacobetti’s perfume for Frédéric Malle, ‘En Passant’ which is like walking quickly by a wet-with-rain lilac bush), does not have to be smelled up close or to be directly worn to be appreciated. Perfume is sold as a sexual aid or attractant and that it is not, per se. It is a sentence, a statement, a word, a phrase, a thought, most of all an atmosphere. People often don’t give it a proper chance. Many are cynical when it comes to perfume and think it’s connected to capitalism or money making or fake pheromones. I hate cynicism and think that perfume is a test of life affirmation.” – SMW.