The short version
- Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s “clinamen” floats hundreds of white porcelain bowls on warm, circulating water, and they ring like bells when they touch.
- Nobody performs it and there is no score, so the water’s movement decides what you hear and no two minutes are the same.
- The Athens version at Onassis Mandra is the first shown outdoors, admission is €5, and sources disagree on whether it closes December 5 or January 5.
In a Belle Époque open-air theatre in Athens, hundreds of white porcelain bowls are floating on three circular pools of warm, circulating water. When two bowls drift together their rims touch and ring with a bell-like tone. That is the whole of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s “clinamen,” which opened at Onassis Mandra in Athens on September 26. There is no performer and no score. The current moves the bowls, and the bowls make the music.
The French composer and artist first conceived the piece in 1997 and has built more than 20 versions since, including at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris and the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Each bowl is chosen for its timbre. The title is the Epicurean word for the random swerve of atoms. Athens is the first time the work has been shown outside, which lets light, wind and the sound of the city into it, and rain when it falls. Boursier-Mougenot told designboom his first reaction to the idea was “It’s an indoor piece.” He also said: “The only message I want to convey is an invitation to inhabit a space.”
Onassis Mandra is at Dionysiou Areopagitou 2. It is open Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 14:30 and 17:30 to 21:30, and admission is €5. None of the accounts says how many bowls there are or how loud the piece is. London has its own self-playing rooms this season, in Yuko Mohri’s installation at the Barbican.
The city’s visitor guide and designboom give the closing date as December 5, while Proto Thema, writing before the opening, gave January 5, so check before you travel.
