“My love, my love, do you understand that you are neither man nor woman but all of it?”
IT WAS A TIME THAT WAS A TIME
THE FLEETINGNESS OF A MOMENT
Sublime destruction and fleeting utopia, IT WAS A TIME THAT WAS A TIME is a unique smoky ambergris fragrance created between British artist Shezad Dawood & French perfumer Nicolas Bonneville.
Are colours fragrant?
Can you smell the hand of fate?
It Was a Time that Was a Time takes its name from the eponymous film shot by Shezad Dawood for his exhibition in New York. In collaboration with other artists, they explored the thin line between reality and possibility by imagining a perfume to scent the feature and bring its story out of the screen and Nicolas Bonneville was chosen to perform this synaesthetic work.
IT WAS A TIME … has become the scent of a landscape, the liberated scent of people forming this imagined community where rules of society, gender and relationships are given new expressions. It is less about images than it is about feelings. The omnipresent blue of skies and seas, infinite wonders here beaming with a heart of immortal and swelling ambergris. Notes of destruction and decay, leather and suede, meet beauty and unseen forms of intimacy.
A siren’s call swaying one’s heart as indigo waters lap around one’s breast..
I sense your presence. I sense your light.
I sense your caress and your sweet breath down my neck.
I know of you, of your coming to me for your presence is to me like a calming bliss.
It is a wave of peace, an ever-so-quiet lake of infinite stillness and your eyes are to me a sea in which I drowned – already. It a blue....
Released as both a sensory element in the Pioneer Works exhibition and a unique perfume, the fragrance contains dark, smoky, and incensed woods mixed with ambergris, marine overtones, and a touch of immortelle absolute.
IT WAS A TIME THAT WAS A TIME, Shezad Dawood, 2015 (film extract)
Presented as part of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)’s Crossing the Line Festival 2015 Special thanks to Fragrance Resources, SCENTYS and SprayTheWorld.
Borrowing its title from Shezad Dawood’s latest film (2015, 16.27 mins commissioned by Pioneer Works in Brooklyn), IT WAS A TIME THAT WAS A TIME is the result of a free-form, collaborative filmmaking experiment, whereby participants took turns documenting each other living in a speculative community formed in response to a theoretical environmental cataclysm where rules of society, gender and relationships are given new expression.
Through a collaboration with French perfumer Nicolas Bonneville, an experiment was conducted to attempt to make an accompanying scent to this film that combined notes of destruction and decay, with beauty and novel forms of intimacy. As the experiment proceeded, it moved from being an accompanying scent, to the scent of the landscape, to the liberated scent of the people forming this imagined community.
Shezad Dawood (http://shezaddawood.com/)
British artist Shezad Dawood works across film, painting and sculpture to juxtapose discrete systems of image, language, site and historical narrative.