Diffusion

The installation Diffusion. Essence de Rabot consists of a fragrance and a film. They are the outcome of an artistic project in Rabot, a Ghent neighbourhood, as part of PILOOT, a platform for art in the public space of Rabot-Tondelier-Blaisantvest in Ghent.

In anticipation of its final installation in the Rabot, the fragrance will be kept by Design Museum Gent, in a handblown glass bottle.

Essence de Rabot is a fragrance that combines the emotions of 100 people who live in the Rabot neighbourhood. The Dutch artists Lotte Geeven and Yeb Wiersma discovered the role of chemosignals during their quest to unveil the direct, unpolished language of emotions. These almost odourless hormones, in our sweat, communicate emotions to others. The artists distilled these hormones from the perspiration, that was harvested with sterile T-shirts, which 100 residents, builders, judges, shopkeepers and night club owners in the Rabot wore for 24 hours on 6 October 2017. The resulting odourless extract attempts to capture the emotional dynamics of an urban locus in an immaterial artwork.

Diffusion. Essence de Rabot was created in the context of PILOOT (Tondelier pilot project) and is part of the Pilootprojecten Kunst in Opdracht (Pilot Projects Art in Commission, 2015 - 2018), an initiative of the Team of the Flemish Government Architect, Kunstenpunt and Flemish Government (Department of Culture, Youth and Media) to develop 5 ground-breaking art commissions in Flanders. The Tondelier pilot project was commissioned by the City of Ghent and Tondelier Development nv. The commission resulted in the establishment of a not-for-profit association called vzw PILOOT, a platform to develop art in the public space of Rabot-Tondelier-Blaisantvest in Ghent.