Art Project “Famous Deaths” Uses Aroma to Capture a Celebrity’s Final Moments

Credit: markmeeuwenoord.com

For many of us, our experience with celebrities is limited to sight and sound. We see images of President John F. Kennedy standing at the podium and we hear Whitney Houston’s voice serenading us through the car radio. But smell is a sense that we rarely relate to celebrities–when we’re watching TV or listening to a record, smell doesn’t usually play much of a role in our experience. But as the artists at the Sense of Smell project show us in their art installation, “Famous Deaths,” aroma has a powerful impact on our memory and our emotions. We may not notice just how important aroma is until all other senses, like sight and touch, are taken away.

The “Famous Deaths” art installation walks visitors through the final moments of a celebrity’s life using scent and sound alone. The Sense of Smell team offers a number of experiences to visitors, from President John F. Kennedy to Princess Diana to Whitney Houston. To immerse visitors in each experience, the team constructed a series of long metal boxes made to resemble mortuary shelves. As each visitor lies inside of the unlit box, different scents and sounds are pumped into the container. For instance, in the John F. Kennedy exhibit, visitors will experience scents such as freshly-cut grass, autumn wind, leather car seats and First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s perfume, and they’ll hear the engine of the car and the ambient sounds of the crowd. Each change in scent and sound is subtle, yet distinctive, painting a clear picture for visitors without having to use images.

Credit: markmeeuwenoord.com

A project like “Famous Deaths” can easily become morbid or insensitive, but the Sense of Smell creators have largely avoided some of these pitfalls in their installations. Their goal with the project is to bring people closer to these monumental moments in history, and to create a deep emotional connection with each celebrity featured. As Sense of Smell team members Frederik Duerinck and Marcel Brakel explain, “Historic events are always kind of abstract to us […]. Smell is a very powerful tool to create embodiment, a kind of analog virtual reality time travel machine.” The artists want visitors to understand the true impact that these celebrities had on the world and the people who were closest to them and to appreciate the significance of their deaths. They wish to make the abstract concepts more real, and to remind visitors that behind every celebrity is a real human being. They humanize rather than sensationalize these famous deaths.

The team not only wanted to create an accurate portrayal of a celebrity’s final moments, they also wanted to stay true to who that person actually was. For this reason, the team spent years carefully studying the people featured in their “Famous Deaths” experiences, taking detailed notes about each aspect of their lives in order to paint a picture of who they really were.

For instance, when they decided to create an experience for Whitney Houston, the team researched police reports and read interviews with Houston and those closest to her in order to find out exactly what life was like for her on a daily basis. They learned what her favorite brand of cigarettes were and found a way to mimic that scent artificially. They also discovered that she liked to use olive oil as a moisturizer, so they included this seemingly minor detail in the experience as well. All of these small details combine to form an accurate, if slightly haunting, idea of what it was like for the people living their last few moments.

Credit: markmeeuwenoord.com

The installation tours around the world at various locations, but it originally gained popularity when it was introduced at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. Art journalist Allison Meier experienced the “Famous Deaths” installation firsthand at the festival, and she describes the process as “surreal.” She chose the John F. Kennedy experience, and says that the installation allowed her to virtually travel back in time to the moment of his assassination. Although she says that the process was slightly nerve-wracking at first (she had to lie inside of a small, dark space), the entire experience was powerful, and left a lasting impression.

The Sense of Smell team will continue to add to its “Famous Deaths” roster in the future, with a goal of exploring the taboos surrounding death. As the founders of the organization explain, both scent and death aren’t discussed at length in the United States. While death is a subject that many people actively avoid thinking about, scent is merely a subject that many people ignore or forget entirely. By melding these two concepts into a single art installation, Sense of Smell brings them to light, forcing us to confront them and appreciate their significance in our lives.