AROMALAND, 2002
Christmas Paper Project for DIE ZIET newspaper

Jenny Marketou – “Aromaland 2002: The Smells of my Imagination”

Holiday wrapping paper commisioned for Christmas Paper Edition by DIE ZEIT the leading German weekly with the curatorial cooperation of ART&IDEA .

Smell is perhaps our most evocative sense. In Marcel Proust’s novel “Remembrance of Things Past", the nostalgic flavor and fragrance of a madeleine, a delicate pastry, evokes a description of taste and smell, the senses that “ alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent.... bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”. We live in an ocean of odors produced by everything imaginable.

In Patrick Suskind novel “Das Parfum” the hero Jean- Baptiste Grenouille has recorded into his inexhaustible memory bank hundreds of thousands of smells in such clear and unmistakable manner that not only he could remember them ,but he could sense them whenever he simply thought about them, he could even create new combinations and images in his imagination”.

I had always thought, that smell had very strong emotional connotations, the ability to stir memories and feelings long hidden. In a series of art projects, I have embarked on a quest to savor the volatile substance of smell and created environments that manipulate the viewer physically, thus evoking a conscious awareness of their perception of identity and collective memory by means of smell–less smells.

Odors arouse, remind, warn, tempt, guide, inspire, inform and communicate, even more so at Christmas time. For “Die Zeit” I create a specific database of Holiday SMELLS that are graphically converted into colors. Each “smelly” color is drawn from an environmental repertoire that includes Christmas and Holiday Smells. A humorous and festive smell - less grid is presented. Each square is distilling a virtual smell into color.

This graphic description of our collective memory is unique but very essential for a medium such as a newspaper through which we communicate and inform about important issues of our daily lives. After all, not only Christmas but also the newspaper itself has been identified by the smell of its newsprint.

I wish to thank Robert Punkenhofer at ART&IDEA for the support .
www.art-idea.com

Please click on the links below where readers can download the christmas paper for further use.
www.zeit.de/2002/leben/geschenkpapier