'Cup-a-Soap'
Workshop
When walking through a city, do you notice every time the smell changes and where one smell stops and the next starts? Our olfactory system is our first sense to develop as well as the most sensitive of our senses. Its responses to our surroundings can provoke powerful emotional reactions, vivid memory retrieval and can even affect our behavior. The urban landscape, with its denseness of variety, presents a myriad of smells which bombard us with airborne chemicals as we traverse its spaces.
In this workshop, participants were given the task of collecting plant samples from the local neighborhood around the hosting Art Space IAa in order to produce soap(s) scented with the flora taken during the exploratory period of the workshop. Participants were shown how to safely produce the soaps using the samples, oil, some water and NaOH. During the workshop, participants were also encouraged to experiment with soap making by producing single bars of soap at a time, and in this way they could cast multiple different soap recipes if they desired. Once the soaps have cured, their use will create an intimate experience of scent and touch as participants clean themselves with the plants that were collected and the essence of the city which those plants had previously phytoremediated.
In this workshop, participants were given the task of collecting plant samples from the local neighborhood around the hosting Art Space IAa in order to produce soap(s) scented with the flora taken during the exploratory period of the workshop. Participants were shown how to safely produce the soaps using the samples, oil, some water and NaOH. During the workshop, participants were also encouraged to experiment with soap making by producing single bars of soap at a time, and in this way they could cast multiple different soap recipes if they desired. Once the soaps have cured, their use will create an intimate experience of scent and touch as participants clean themselves with the plants that were collected and the essence of the city which those plants had previously phytoremediated.
*Click on each of the thumbnails below to see an enlarged version.
The workshop happened at Art Space IAa in Jeju-si, Jeju-do, Korea between 13:00 to 15:00 on 2017-09-08.
