Respir ă (Breathe)
Respir ă (Breathe) – The smell of my Thought
Major Project – FA6P01, 2021
Gabriela Cociasi aka #VirtualPerfumer
TRANSLATION
Breathe. Breathe now. Look at me (Inhale, exhale). Now breathe. Are you alive? Then you can do it. B-R-E-A-T-H-E! Try it yourself. BREATHE. Can you feel it? Put you hand on your shoulder blade. Breathe in the back of my neck. And try again. What do you feel?
It smells like Resistance.
There is a deeper reason for breathing. The indicative of perishing from this physical world is the loss of breath. Not vision. Not taste. Not hearing. Not touch. But a synergistic complex feeling of them all, all enclosed by a final breath. Inhale. That synthesis of life. Exhale. The transition through the absolute towards a new life.
Our presence in the physical form never ceased to have an odour. And the moment we refrain from existing in this political assembly, the body, our cumulative odour we gathered through life and experiences is left as a trace, an odour-print. It is our retention in this world. I would measure this experience in zeptoseconds, this unusual unit of measure of something that does not exist outside us but is us on a different form, at a different scale.
One of the 4 vital signs of life (body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and BREATHING rate). I counted: 16 breaths per minute. 960 breaths an hour. 23.040 breaths a day. 8.409.600 a year. We are breath counts.
I work with images and language until a smell is detected. Making perfumes out of experience and imagination. This year I was and am exploring art as a form of inquiry, a way to experiment knowledge, mixed and compelling ways of analysing an environment, becoming more aware of breath, thoughts and actions. In practice, the sense of smell is developed by experimenting with smell.
Through my experimentation and directing my thought towards the Major Project, I work with exploration of the permanent and dynamic relationship between natural, cultural and physical. I enter cultures, work with happenings, I use low budget elements to create an authentic perfume and process of experimentation of a perfume. I provide further context for research and investigation.
I speak odour
I speak odour, Level 6, Winter Show project at School of Art, Architecture and Design, 2020-2021
#Empty by #VirtualPerfumer
A collection and recollection of forgotten memories, bottled. An aseptic smell, quiet, still. It offers no peace, no direction. It only smells when you close your eyes. It smells like politics and long ques in communism. The victory of reduction. The emptiness. The empty toilet paper shelves that in furlough looked like 30 years ago. 30 years of evolution from there to here. For nothing. There was no food, no glory. It only smelled like fear.
‘4’
collection of #VirtualFragrances by #VirtualPerfumer
a territory of imaginative and emotional olfaction with an antropomorphic perspective
‘4’ involves a description of odour that has a chemical, neurological and social background. The #VirtualFragrances have a healing quality and ultimately, their virtual existence is made for the perceiver to discover the intrinsic odour of emotion.
‘domestic kiss’
from ‘my brain is my home story’, 2019Sculpture presented at ‘The Golden Ratio’ pop-up show at St. Giles in the Field, London, 2019
A form of expression that is confessing life stories transferred into sculpture, painting and suture.
All in bold colours. Antonymy. Smoothness and roughness. Feelings. Stereotypes. Struggle. Resolution. The cycle of transformation. The perfect ratio.
‘not vulnerable enough’
#2019
perfume, wire, cotton, aluminium, thread, fabric paint, paper
The piece is the antithesis of gestures.
Equation: fabric (vulnerability, malleability, memory) + perfume (memory enhancer) + paint (experience) + wire (lace, thread, vulnerability) = memory of experience = method of communication = not vulnerable enough
Gabriela Cociasi 