DEMO ACCORDS, Author Reading and Chat with Pia Long (online)

Join us as we welcome perfumer and writer Pia Long for a discussion about her new book, DEMO ACCORDS. Attendance for this online event is by donation through Eventbrite.

DEMO ACCORDS is an interdisciplinary art project combining nine essays, one short story and ten fully published perfume formulas with original illustrations into a multlayered narratve. A “demo accord” is fragrance industry speak for an open formula shown at trade shows in order to demonstrate a new perfumery ingredient or technique. A demonstration in political context is a protest.

In this work perfumer and author Pia Long explores the intersection between her two lifelong loves: writing and perfumery. Part manifesto, part polemic, part protest, part autobiography, the common thread is radical vulnerability of the perfumer’s art, practice and personal views.

Interrogating some fundamental questions about who perfumery belongs to and creating a parallel platform without a brand or a commercial consumer product, Demo Accords aims to exist for its own sake as a project that uses perfumery as an artistic storytelling device.

If the book is a script, then the formulas are sheet music, and the actual resulting liquid is therefore the orchestra playing. It is not necessary or compulsory to buy the liquid perfume sample kit to go with the book but it will help everyone hear the music.

The book has significant contributions from Nick Gilbert who wrote the scent descriptions and notes lists, as though for a protest perfume brand. Featuring original illustrations from multiple artists and a full colour cover by a Brighton street artist, Demo Accords is more than the sum of its parts.

Learn more about DEMO ACCORDS and order.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pia Long is a Finnish-born, UK-based perfumer who views scent as a form of communication and perfumes as bottled stories. With an upbringing and education rooted in studying languages, translation and writing, she approaches her craft as magical realism, combining art, design and science to conjure imaginative experiences. Her career in fragrance spans four decades, during which she has created a multitude of perfumes and product fragrances. She is a member of the International Society of Perfumer-Creators, a member of the British Society of Perfumers, and a recipient of the Septimus Piesse Visionary Award from the Institute of Art and Olfaction. Pia’s first story was published in a Finnish children’s magazine when she was 9 years old. She first attended a peace protest, aged 11. This is her first book.

Some of the brands Pia has created fragrances for: GHOST, August & Piers, Beaufort, Zoologist, Vallense, LUSH and Eau de Boujee.

ATTENDANCE AND REFUND POLICY

This is an online event that will take place on Zoom. The Zoom link will be sent by email approximately 24 hours before the event. Lest this email end up in your spam folder, please be sure to add hello@artandolfaction.com to your address book.

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