No special kinds of training or set of skills is required, other than being comfortable in a group. We’ll do relational, spatial and bodily exercises. The goal will be to improve our sense of olfaction and to see if we can generate new group dynamics. The workshop is divided in three sections: the first one is a series of exercises to build up concentration on the sense of olfaction, space (without the use of our eyes), and each other, so that we can reach a plane of awareness and refocus our senses. It is followed by a short introduction to how the sense of smell works. Then the last section comprises a series of olfactory exercises and the application of what we learned in the first two sections to initiate production.

I developed this workshop as research methodology for the “Creolized Scents of Chicago.” This project was supported, in part, by a CAAP grant form the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Chicago. I have adapted it so it can be opened to any artists who may be interested in integrating scents in their practice. It has been conducted at Archer (a now defunct artist run space in Bridgeport), at Harold Washington College, at Nida Art Colony (Lithuania) and for the exhibition “Hecho en Casa” at Cobalt Space in Pilsen.

If you’d like to participate, or host a workshop, please send me an email. Thank you.

The Poetics Of Herbology

In june 2012, I was fortunate to be awarded a residency in Aizpute, Latvia, at SERDE.  The residency culminated in a performance where I served local herbal teas ritualistically, their scents impulsing movements and mood respective to each tea. In order to drink tea, one needs utensils and vessels. Therefore, thanks to the facilities offered by SERDE, and the technical expertise of Ugis Pucens and Armand Ausmanim, I made 39 ceramic cups (14 were Raku), and five sets of wooden utensils carved out of birch wood (a very popular tree in Latvia.) Most of my time at the residency was spent making these utensils.

I also asked fellow resident Tiago Ribeiro Patricio, to contribute some poetry to the performance. O Aroma em si was etched over several cups. The poem spanned both some of the Raku ware, and the brown ware typical of the region. I glazed the inside of the latter white, so the color of each different herbal tea could come forward.

The actual performance was processional, as it moved across the house of SERDE, from the top floor to the ground floor and ended in the courtyard. It began in silence upstairs with Alchemilla Milefolia, moved to a second room where I poured Betula, there Tiago began improvising, and then I enticed our audience down the staircase into the main dining room, where I served Lamium Album and then Artemisia. We ended outside with Fragraria Vesca. In terms of structure I alternated between sweeter (Alchemilla milefolia, and Lamium Album) notes and more bitter and more aggressive greener notes (Betula, Artemisia, and Fragraria Vesca.) Tiago improvised his “Medicinal poetry” in his native tongue, Portuguese. Later on, he proceeded on passing around poems translated in Latvian, written on ribbons and on papers folded in the shape of tea bags, which to our delighted surprise, some of our audience members spontaneously read aloud. We are very grateful to them. This partaking of herbal tea, grounded in local herbal, knowledge, and craft, fostered a communal moment crossing linguistic and cultural differences.

 I am also very grateful to the following donors who contributed to a fundraising campaign covering my airfare to Latvia:

 Christianne Barrier-Lynn, James Earl Lynn, Cecilia Vargas, P. Michael, Travis, Ryan T. Dunn, Miyeon Kwon, Mikey Bildres, Claire Pentecost, Ingrid petersen, Mark Jeffrey, Charisse Baker, Betty Nicolas, Serge Planchenault, In Young Ju, Steve Danzis, Katrina Chamberlin, Joanne Gutierrez, Meghan Moe Beitiks, Samantha Hill, Chris Gilmore, Gabriel Khili, Maurene Cooper, Jeff Betts, Madeleine Bailey, Connie Noyes, Antony Maubert, Bryan Saner, Ben Carney, Botanoadopt, Joseph Belknap, Davis & Strathmann, Julie Terrell, Paul Richter, Muindi Fanuel Muindi, J. Mariano.

For this performance I prepared goo-duck (a duck inside a goose) and served it as a public meal, made of air, at the foot of one of the wind turbines in Schöppingen. It was a way of addressing a pressing issue: creativity and renewable energy. Fellows from the Stiftung Kunstlerdorf helped me. Karlheinz Jeron was my consultant, and we were assisted by Miriam Kilali, Mark Straeck and Jana Frantz for the preparation of side dishes: red cabbage and potato dumplings. I chose to locate this performance at the base of a turbine that looked different from all the other ones. It was from an earlier generation installed on the hill. It had a name engraved on its base: “Mutty.” This made it all the easier to direct my audience towards this performative meal. The purpose of this performance was both to celebrate renewable energy in the form of a wind turbine, but also to comment on the impact of agriculture on the green house effect.

The wind turbines produce a periodic drone (the period being punctuated by the turning of each blade) to which gusts of wind add their own sounds. They are not very loud, yet one can pick their drone within a few hundred meters. The best place to hear this drone is right beneath the blades. The period is very clear, and from time to time, with no apparent pattern, the wind adds its own song. I figured eating within this sound environment would be thrilling, and would add to the notion of what energy is.

When I first explored the hill, with the wind turbines (forming what is called: “a wind farm”), over Schöppingen, I was struck by their height, and the sound their rotor blades produced. These aspects evoked giants, and thus the episode where the literary figure of Don Quixote attacked a wind mill, having mistaken it for a giant. However, I took on the persona of a 21^st century Don Quixote not to attack these giants but to harness their power and turn them into our allies. Past, present and future forms of energy coalesced during this performance, in the form of transportation (horse), calories (meal) and renewable energy (wind turbine.)

press article by Rupert Joemann visible here

All photos courtesy Miriam Kilali

all photos, courtesy Alberto Aguilar

Gwenn-Aël LYNN and Hermes Santana (a chef from the neighbourhood of Pilsen in Chicago) teamed up to make and serve a pozole dinner in a performative way, emphasizing its olfactory dimension. Pozole is a traditional Mexican dish. In this case it reflected the hybridity of the chef who is Black American and Mexican. Some of the ingredients for that hybrid pozole were: cilantro, collard green, hominy, pork…
This dinner took place at Cobalt Studios, located in Pilsen, and was sonified with a “Pilsen” soundscape. It was part of a series of event: Hecho en Case/Home made curated by Alberto Aguilar and Jorge Lucero 6/10-6/24/11. A program of events that verged on acts of domesticity.

This performance took place at the Nida Art Colony, in Lithuania during the T-R-A-C-E-S symposium: reinventing interdisciplinarity. I devised a tea ritual based on five herbs that grow on the Curonian Spit: Thymus serpyllum, Fragaria vesca, Hypericum perforatum, Rosa canina, Achillea millefolia. The goal of this performance was to articulate movements and sounds with moods related to the scent of each tea. Sonification was provided by Natalia Borissova. It became an interactive live tuning of tea, scent, sound and movement. an article in Lithuanian was published by Laima Kreivyté: « Nidos heterotopijos. Ir laivas plaukia“

Racines… (jardin parlant)

roots… [a speaking garden] from Gwenn-Ael LYNN on Vimeo.

An interactive sound enhanced winter garden. Foreigners, and nationals with experience abroad, recommended the plants constituting this installation. While in residence, I met with them and conducted interviews discussing the metaphor of roots, as pertaining to one’s origins. During the exhibition, abstracts from these interviews were triggered by the visitors, whose displacements were monitored by discrete c-mos cameras and a computer. This project was realized while in residence in St. Cloud, France, at the pepinieres europeennes pour jeunes artistes. 2010.

entretien avec Aude Lavigne sur France Culture ici

Delocalized-Relocalized

Collaborative Performance with Valeria Cotaimich, Andrea Inocencio, Gwenn-Ael Lynn, Melina Pena.

If you would like to see a longer, more complete version of this performance archive go here and here

For this installation I chose smells about the locality of Chicago based on interviews I conducted with long term Chicago residents. I interfaced the smells with some of these interviews abstract (to give some context to the scents) with an EZIO board. The visitors’ movements were tracked by small c-mos cameras looking down at the area around each smell diffuser. Depending on where the visitor was he would trigger the smell diffuser and one of the two or three sound tracks associated to each diffusers. In other words, by moving around the diffuser he/she would go through two or three short sound tracks.  These tracks were composed by Paul Schutte, based on olfactory interviews I had with long term (15 years or more) Chicago residents. The scents were supplied by Michel Roudnitska from Art-et-Parfum. This was coded in processing (processing.org). The diffusers were disseminated over the entire gallery floor, trespassing curatorial boundaries, challenging territorial ownership, pretty much the way scents and sound behave. This constituted my MFA exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For a collateral version of this work into NetArt, go here and click on “Scensing Histories”

Scensing Histories
Click on image to be redirected to web project
Once redirected, click on Scensing Histories button

This online project is an emanation from “Untitled” (2008), an interactive olfactory installation.