Migratory Notes

Migratory Notes is an immersive multisensory installation exploring Marseille as a city shaped by movement, arrival and exchange. Developed through sound, moving image, scent and taste, the work considers migration not only through the movement of people, but also through the circulation of goods, ingredients, cultural practices and sensory memory.

As one of the Mediterranean’s major port cities, Marseille has long been formed through successive histories of trade, migration and encounter. Migratory Notes approaches the city through these overlapping routes, tracing connections between West and Central Africa and the Mediterranean while foregrounding the experiences of African diasporic communities living in Marseille.

The installation brings together field recordings, moving image and olfactory compositions to construct a sensory environment in which different geographies coexist. Recordings made in Cameroon intersect with the acoustic life of Marseille, allowing agricultural landscapes, streets, markets, kitchens and the port city to enter into relation with one another. Rather than presenting these places as separate points of origin and destination, the work considers the networks of labour, movement and exchange through which they are connected.

Scent forms a central part of the installation. Olfactory compositions evoke the mineral atmosphere of the Mediterranean, the smell of rain falling on dry earth in sub-Saharan environments, and the aromas of spices associated with cooking and domestic life. These scents move through the installation alongside sound and image, allowing memory and place to be encountered through forms of perception that are often difficult to locate or contain.

The work pays particular attention to the ways sensory memory travels. Smell, flavour and sound can remain connected to places long after people have moved away from them, while the same ingredients and cultural practices acquire new meanings when encountered elsewhere. Within Migratory Notes, migration therefore appears not simply as departure and arrival, but as an ongoing process of adaptation, translation and transformation.

Food extends this enquiry beyond the installation itself. A public dinner developed with Chef Vou brought African and French culinary traditions into dialogue through a specially conceived menu, transforming the exhibition into a space of gathering and shared consumption. Two craft beers produced in collaboration with Brasserie du Castellet—one brewed with uda and the other with uziza – further translated the movement of ingredients and flavour into the project’s gustatory language.

Through these overlapping sensory registers, Migratory Notes brings together personal memory, economic exchange, labour, food culture and diasporic experience. Sound, scent, moving image and taste operate not as separate elements, but as different ways of tracing how places become connected through movement.

Rather than offering a singular narrative of migration, the installation allows these routes and sensory fragments to remain layered and multiple. Marseille emerges as a point of convergence within a much wider geography, one shaped continually by the circulation of people, materials, memories and tastes.

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