On May 7, 2010 at 2:02 pm, I got on the no. 24 bus (Sherbrooke) at Villa-Maria subway station. I leafed through magazines and tried the perfume samples in the bus. I got off at the Sherbrooke subway station at 3:15 pm. I got on the no. 24 bus again at 3:50 in the opposite direction, repeating the same actions. I got off at the corner of Sherbrooke and Victoria streets at 4:30 pm. Sitting further away in the bus, Riaz Mehmood accompanied me and acted as my witness.
On May 8, 2010 at 11:00 am, I went to the men's perfume counter in the basement of the Bay department store with Riaz Mehmood. We tried several perfumes and bought two presentation boxes, following the advice of salesclerks Frank and Nelly.
On May 8, 2010 at 1:45 pm, I went to Centre des arts actuels Skol, where I leafed through magazines again, trying the perfume samples. I put magazine pages with perfume ads on the floor, at the gallery entrance. I cut out perfume bottles from magazines and gave them to visitors. I sat in the corridor outside the gallery, hiding my face with magazines open to pages with perfume ads. The action ended at 3:30 pm.
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.