13 perfumed glass-framed photos with text, 50 x 76 cm (4.5 square metres)
Edition of 7
Catalogue ISBN 3−9804354−2−3, 10 Euro
The photo series was produced as digital compositing version for projection with soundtrack (English: 11:15 minutes, trailer 1:27 minutes and German: 13:30 minutes, trailer 1:33 minutes) in 2009, digital processing: Ingolf Pink, edit Mirco Sanftleben – Pixel 2 Motion, Cologne (D)
The Senses – a collection of works:
The Senses: Play in Camera (sense of sight)
The Senses: Play it by Ear & An Ear for You (sense of sound)
The Senses: Ô d’Oriane (sense of smell)
The Senses: Zucchini (sense of taste)
The Senses: Intimacy (sense of touch)
A set of 13 perfumed photographs each 50 x 76 cm, are arranged on a wall (4,5 metres square) anticlockwise, in a not quite symmetrical circular shape. The sepia-toned, black and white photos taken in 1997 are of fashion stylist Claudia Stauch presenting herself as a model might, advertising shoes, underwear, different articles of clothing and herself.
The images have been digitally re-worked to incorporate English texts in black and gold tints. The quotations are from two short stories by Primo Levi and Italo Calvino: The Mnemogogues, from the book “The Sixth Day” by Primo Levi and The Name, the Nose from the book “Under the Jaguar Sun” by Italo Calvino. The extracts indicate how similar the two stories are. Both are about memory and pre-history associations with the sense of smell. Sensuality and perfumes are the preoccupations of The Mnemogogues set in Italy and The Name, the Nose a story spanning epochs and different locations: the Savannah, France of the belle époque and contemporary London. Although love and the mystification of the female sex is primarily addressed in both the short stories, the writers Levi and Calvino also concern themselves with mortality and the illusory nature of bodily pleasure. The photo series Ô d’Oriane is intended to resemble fashion photography where youth and beauty are icons. The fashion magazine world is peopled eternally by the young.
Tanya Ury
more
The title Ô d’Oriane has other implications. Dorian (Gray), the androgynous character of Oscar Wilde’s novel written in England 1891, remains fatally attractive and unmarked by time while his portrait ages; in order to quench his insatiable desire for life, Dorian develops a multiple personality. The art of perfumery becomes one of his obsessions. Smell is said to be the lowest of the senses according to Patrick Süsskind, whose book ‘Das Parfum’, written in Germany 1985 but set in a France of the Ancien Régime, is specifically about the search for the ultimate experience of this sense. Grenouille, Süsskind’s protagonist who becomes a perfumier, has an olfactory sense more highly developed than any sense of morality. He is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his ends and, like Dorian Gray, is not appalled if this implies destroying another life.
‘Story of O, Histoire d’O’ — Pauline Réage, France 1954, is an unsentimental and graphically detailed account of the willing sexual enslavement, of a woman named O. In order to prove the depths of her love for her master, René, O is prepared to allow the most extreme limits of humiliation, depravity and pain to be inflicted upon her.
O is for opening.
Another O, another unnamed woman, where ‘O’ may stand for anything, for Omega, the ultimate woman, is ‘Die Marquise von O…’ by Heinrich von Kleist written during his imprisonment in Napoleonic France, but published in Germany 1808. This short story set in Italy, uncovers the mystery of the apparent immaculate conception of a French widow. The ‘O’ of the title might therefore poetically, as in the case of ‘Story of O’, describe the shape of her womb, the mysterious internal universe of a woman. In the event, it transpires that during a deep and death-like swoon, the Marquise von O…, has unknowingly been penetrated and impregnated, (the word rape is significantly missing from the text) by a Russian military officer, the Graf F…, who had just heroically rescued her from a hoard of marauding soldiers of the same army. The Graf F…, smitten in love and hoping to conceal his shame, consequently asks for her hand in marriage.
The name enclosed in the title Ô d’Oriane also suggests a character in Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ (À la Recherché du Temps Perdu). In the film ‘Swann in Love’ made by Volker Schlöndorff in France, 1983 after Proust, Fanny Ardant plays Oriane, the Princesse des Laumes. There is a distinct similarity in appearance between Claudia Stauch in the photographs and Fanny Ardant in this film.
“They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,” a quotation from ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (Oscar Wilde himself, died prematurely in Paris, as an exile). In the literature I have mentioned here (apart from Levi’s The Mnemogogues), France or anything French has become a metaphor for the exotic and danger, attributes excited by the sense of smell. In nearly half of the mentioned texts, sensual feelings are aroused by the sense of smell. Against their better judgement, the male protagonists allow desire to control their reason. The female, perceived as a foreign body, is possessed through means of violence in most of the cited literature.
There is still more wordplay at play within the title Ô d’Oriane. Odor is the Americanised spelling of the word odour, a scent or perfume. ‘Or’ is the French for gold. ‘D’or’, is ‘of gold’. Gustave Doré was a 19th century French illustrator. In an attempt to quite literally embody the meaning of his name, he covered his entire body with gold dust; as a result he died of asphyxiation.
There is a famous perfume named: Ô de Lancôme. The Ô (o circumflex), in this instance, replaces the word ‘eau’ (eau de toilette — toilet water). The cipher: Ô, here and in the title for the photo series, represents an essence, essence of Oriane, Ô d’Oriane.
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The text extracts are from:
The Mnemogogues from the book: ‘The Sixth Day’ by Primo Levi, published in 1966 and translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal for the Michael Joseph publication, London 1990.
The Name, the Nose from the book: ‘Under the Jaguar Sun’ by Italo Calvino, written in Paris 1972 and translated from the Italian by William Weaver for the Jonathan Cape publication UK 1992.
Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919 and trained as a chemist. Arrested as a member of the antifascist resistance during the war, he was deported to Auschwitz and survived. He later wrote many accounts of his experiences. ‘The Drowned and the Saved’, Levi’s impassioned attempt to understand the ‘rationale’ behind the concentration camps, was completed shortly before his tragic suicide in Turin, 1987.
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in San Remo, Italy. He was an essayist and a journalist. In 1946 when he was 24, he wrote his first book: ‘The Path to the Spiders’ Nests’ which draws heavily on his experiences in the war. Calvino had been a partisan. In 1972, Calvino started writing a book of the five senses. At his death, in 1985, only three stories had been completed.
Italo Calvino and Primo Levi were friends.
Tanya Ury
Presentation
2000 Frauen Blicke, (Women Look) with Anna Halm-Schudel, In Focus Galerie, Cologne (D)
2001 Solo, Hotel Seehof, Zurich (CH)
2004 Lies, Lust, Art & Fashion — Signale der Kleidung (Clothing Signals), Podewil, Berlin (D)
2009 (1.11) The Senses, a solo multimedia event during the Intercultural Days, Ô d’Oriane: digital compositing version for projection with soundtrack (German), 8 pm Arkadas Theater — Bühne der Kulturen (Stages of Diverse Cultures), Cologne (D)
www.interkulturelle-woche-koeln.de
Publications & Press
2000 Ô d’Oriane Kölner Stadtanzeiger Artikel Sabine Müller (D) article as PDF
2001 (6−7) Announcement of the exhibition “Insensed” Hotel Seehof, Zurich (CH) with image no. 1 from Ô d’Oriane in Kunstforum International, edition 155 (D)
Artist’s Writings & Publications
2009 (1.11) The Senses on the Arkadas Theatre, Bühne der Kulturen (Stages of Diverse Cultures) website Cologne (D) www.buehnederkulturen.de