2005

Commissioned by the 9th International Istanbul Biennial, 2005. Curated by Charles Esche and Vasif Kortun.

A version presented at 9th Baltic Triennale of Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2005. Curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Raimundas Malašauskas, and Alexis Vaillant.

Eau d’Ernest is a perfume that evokes the spirit of the writer Ernest Hemingway, who through his books and public persona came to embody the myth of American individuality and virile courage. He is an emblematic person from a time when America smelled good. The Eau d’Ernest fragrance is an exuberant combination of bold masculinity, capturing the exhilaration of bull fights and safari, with some vulnerable and tragic notes,

In 2003 I stayed at the Buyuk Londra Hotel in Istanbul, the very hotel Hemingway had stayed at in 1922 when he was covering the Greco-Turkish War for the Toronto Daily Star. Hemingway’s first dispatch stated: ‘Constantinople is noisy, hot, hilly, dirty and beautiful ... packed with uniforms and rumors.’ It’s easy to feel Hemingway’s presence still hovering around the hotel bar.

I developed the fragrance Eau d’Ernest with Ulrich Lang of Ulrich Lang Fragrances, New York, and the perfumer Virginia Bonofiglio. Dark, brooding notes of burnt woods and sensual musks evoke an earthy masculinity, while top notes of crisp citrus and aromatic herbals add youthful athleticism. We concocted several possible formulae, which I then took to the 25th Annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in Key West, Florida. I asked many of the ‘Hemingways’ gathered there to choose the fragrance they felt most captured their hero.

The favored fragrance oil was made in New York and transported to Istanbul where Pinkar Cosmetics mixed it with alcohol to manufacture 100ml bottles of eau de toilette. I collaborated with master label-maker Ismail Ince on the design of the label for Eau d’Ernest, based on a passport photo of the young Hemingway.

And in partnership with the Turkish communication design company, Dream Design Factory, a promotional campaign with television adverts and a poster was created. A short form of the advert was screened on CNN Türk, during the Istanbul Biennial in June 2005.

Knock-off copies of Eau d’Ernest soon started turning up for sale on the streets of Istanbul. The photo of a young Hemingway look-alike was used for the label, collapsing the realities of the copycat black market economy and a culture obsessed with celebrity and doppelgangers.

I smuggled some of the ‘pirated’ bottles into Vilnius, Lithuania, and launched an advertising campaign with large street posters to ‘boycott’ the new fragrance.

Materials & Actions: One thousand 100ml bottles of eau de toilette for men, two hundred 100ml bottles of knockoff copies of the fragrance, participation in the 2005 Hemingway Look-Alike Competition in Key West, Florida, TV advert for CNBC and CNN Türk.

Location: Key West, Florida, and Istanbul, Turkey.