18th-26th November 2016
Ambling, Testing, Smelling, Mapping, Listening, Talking, Distilling, Rambling, Viewing, Reading, Understanding.
I arrived in Kypseli, Athens at the beginning of October for a residency with Snehta and began conducting sensory walks around the neighbourhood and meeting with locals; human, animal and botanical. I came with the aim of understanding Kypseli from as many different perspectives as possible. What makes a place a place? What gives it its atmosphere? Is it the smell, the sound, the colour or light? What influences these elements within the place?
For 2 weeks at the end of November I opened up my workspace and practice to the public in the form of a lab in Snehta’s gallery space. People were able to experience my work to date and get involved in ongoing activities in the lab including:
- going on a sound walk in collaboration with the Acoustic Ecology Seminar by Akoo-o at TwixtLab
- a film of Kypseli from a dog’s eye view
- a meditative film installation with footage I took locally
- adding their own thoughts about the key smells, sounds and sights of Kypseli to my archive of research
- meeting the Snehta chemist, Filoktitis Veinoglou, who was in residence each Saturday, distilling essential oils from the trees and plants which give Kypseli some of its smells. He also gave a talk about the various distillation processes he used and how smells move through the air.
- A publication documenting I Left My Senses in I. Drosopoulou, my residency in Greece with Snehta.
Jan Uprichard 