Parfums

Furtive action, May 2010

One day, in my banal life, I got excited by perfumes exhaled by the world, until then so bland. They were the disquieting harbingers of love.
-Marcel Proust

In September 2007, the young woman sitting beside me on the Montreal-Calgary plane is reading a fashion magazine. She is dressed according to the latest fashion. She carefully lifts the flaps of perfume ads; she inhales, then rubs her wrists, neck and face in an increasingly frantic way, mixing all the scents. I am deeply troubled by these gestures, both simple and enigmatic, ambiguous and sensual, almost verging on indecency. Inscribed in my memory, they speak to me about desire, seduction and the excesses of consumer society

I wanted to recreate and interpret these gestures in various contexts. I like the idea of several, distinct audiences or no audience at all. Accordingly, I planned several versions of this action: in the bus (the bus route 24, which goes through the well-to-do neighbourhoods of Westmount and downtown Montreal, on Sherbrooke street); at the men's fragrances counter of The Bay's department store and at gallery Skol, near the reception, as if I came to read magazines to keep company to the person in charge of the reception. I was curious to see how the different contexts would bring variations in the meaning of these gestures.

With Parfums, I wanter to bring my performance activity into the field of furtive practice, which represented a further step for me, that I still contemplate with much enthusiasm.