Istituto dell'Odore Litania d'Incenso

Incense, incense, and more incense.

The scent becomes a lullaby: the cold all around, the calm of the end. Incense, incense, and more incense. Listen, don’t you hear? It is everywhere now. Cold, still, still, incense.

Frankincense, myrrh, elemi, and benzoin carry the incense, with cade oil and birch smoking beneath. Artemisia and cinnamon cut through the cold, and iris sits in the center. Oud, costus, castoreum, gurjum, and labdanum absolute darken the base, with cedarwood, amyris, and musk close behind. Cashmeran, Ambrocenide, and a synthetic note sit in the core alongside them.

Istituto dell'Odore names three roles: Meo Fusciuni, archivist; Federica Castellani, analyst; Alessio Gerini, oneiromancer. There is a place, there is a building, there is an archive: a collection of fragrances made to archive the past and the present, and so make the olfactory future permanent. It is the one place, physical and imaginary at once, where the olfactory memories and essences humankind has lost over time are kept.

Each release is built around a specific raw material and becomes a sanctuary for memories and emotions, so that a personal experience turns into a shared element of the collective, toward a comprehensive catalogue of raw materials that carry common memories. The creator becomes an archivist and custodian of tomorrow's olfactory memory. The work begins with the research and cataloguing of artefacts, and the first five are already on display.