Condillac's Statue
Yidan Kim
2023
Performance, 9 min
Imagine there is a living statue.
This statue, which doesn’t have any sensory experience, is in a state in which it has not yet encountered the world.
One day, the statue's sense of smell, which is the most primitive sense, opens.
Can the statue distinguish itself from the smell?
Will the statue perceive smell with only a dichotomous response of pain and ple
asure?
Then follows the opening of hearing, taste, sight and, finally, touch.
At what stage is the statue able to distinguish between itself and the outside world?
The performance is based on the thought experiment proposed by the French philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac in his work 'Traité des Sensations' (1754). Based on Condillac's theory that the senses are the sole origin of human cognition, giving rise to all mental faculties such as attention, reflection, judgement, reasoning and memory, the performance presents a living statue.
Familiar smells from daily life—blue cheese, antibacterial spray, leather jackets, fresh onions, boiled sugar and the smell of laundry from a washing machine—are each visualised in the form of Smell Balls and placed randomly around the space. Suddenly endowed with a sense of smell, the statue becomes a cognitive being capable of perceiving space and discovering itself and the world through smell.
Performer : Casper Dillen