The children are welcomed and dressed in custom-made workshop aprons. Seated on the floor they work together in groups of three sharing a large spice mortar. We introduce spices from the kitchens of both Asia and the low lands: kaffir lime leaves, black pepper, whole green cardamom, anis stars, cinnamon and allspice. The children work together to grind the spices and as the pods are broken and pulverised, the room fills with inter mingling smells. The group then moves from mortar to mortar and experience and talk about the smells and what they remind us of. In the next stage of the workshop we then mix the ground spices with the paint-base that we've specially developed with milk and cornstarch. Then each child makes a smell painting on blotting paper. Each spice painting can become a unique composition of spice to bring home and to remember this day by.
This workshop was previously run at the art and theatre festival for baby's and toddlers Babelut 2008 in Neerpelt(Belgium) and each session was a sell out success. Maki Ueda has worked extensively with smell as a performative object and Kristina Andersen is bringing her long experience for running workshops for children. Please see our respective bios below.
First we grind the spices and herbs like cardamon, lavender, and star anise into powder with a mortar. As they are ground, the room is filled with the delicious scents.
'Wow, look! There's the black seeds inside the green peel... doesn't it smell great?'
'What does it smell of? Don't you think of the sweets?'
Then we add the custom-made paint base. It's made with the milk, cornstarch, and citric acid etc.
We are now ready to paint.
We had already prepared 16 different scented paints beforehand.
After finishing painting, the kids take the paintings back home together with the memories of the scents that they've smelled in the workshop.
Most of the kids were interested in mixing the different scents on the paper, but this boy was totally obsessed by ginger.
'Wow it looks like a poop!'
If you close your eyes, you can actually trace the intensity of the scent with your nose. So it's like a map for your nose.
Kristina Andersen (Copenhagen, 1970)
Kristina is a maker and researcher based at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. She holds an MA in Design, an M.Sc in Virtual Environments, and was a research fellow at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. She works with electronics and games to create unusual objects and experiences. Children are often her main users and collaborators. She has taught and mentored at institutions like The Patchingzone, DasArts, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academie and hosted numerous informal workshops in strange locations.
Maki Ueda (Tokyo, 1974)
www.ueda.nl
Maki is a Rotterdam based artist who works with the olfactory sense in art. She has developed a unique combination of chemical and kitchen skills in order to extract scents of daily life, ranging from food, space, to bodily scents. She studied media art at The Environmental Information Studies Department (B.A., 1997) and at The Master School of Media and Governance (M.A., 1999), Keio University, Japan. She also attended courses at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery in France.
Her blog on scents: http://scent-lab.blogspot.com