Project: nOsense

A Multidisciplinary Olfactory Archaeology of Memory

Artist: Lisa Rommé

Concept: nOsense is an immersive, multidisciplinary installation born during the 2020-2021 pandemic art-residency at ACME (London). The title reflects the cognitive dissonance of that era: a state where heightened sensory awareness yielded "no sense, "transforming lived experience into "nonsense.” The project explores the fragmentation of memory and the body’s capacity to archive the invisible through scent, our most enduring mnemonic medium. Inspired by Proust’s "madeleine, " the work investigates how we represent the shards of our past and how others perceive these translated intimacies. The Installation: A Total Immersion The project functions as a contemporary "cabinet of curiosities, "sacralizing ephemeral experiences as relics. The installation is a total immersion, integrating sculpture, handcrafted engravings, bespoke furniture, sound, and olfaction. It consists of 4 to 6 custom-designed wooden furniture pieces acting as pedestals for scented sculptures. These polymer clay forms, reminiscent of draperies, support glass objects and are bathed in soft, shifting colored lights. The visual narrative is complemented by a series of linocuts, hand-carved by the artist. These engravings draw conceptual inspiration from Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, where the "drapery" represents the infinite folds of the soul and the complexity of perception. The titles are further informed by John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, creating a dialogue between Baroque philosophy and modern emotional nomenclature. Scent and Sound: The Sacral Medium Sound plays a pivotal role in the interactive experience. Composer Nicolas Rommé created a contemporary electronic soundscape reflecting each individual sculpture. The composition weaves together echoes of a church organ and "angelic" voices with distorted audio interference from the past, emphasizing the instability of memory. The olfactory component acts as the unifying force. The artist utilizes a sacred palette of frankincense, myrrh, and various traditional incense infusions typically used during religious mass. By immersing the space in these ancestral scents, the work bypasses rational explanation to activate a direct, embodied experience of uncertainty and ritualistic comfort. Symbolism and Conclusion. Drawing from the aesthetics of classical memorials, the sculptures function as sarcophagi for "trophies" of London life. The drapery-covered pedestals reference the burials of monarchs, yet many remain empty, expressing the suspended moments of 2020. nOsense challenges the viewer to confront the limits of their own recollection, making the "archaeology of the invisible" tangible through a multisensory encounter.