When Porcelain Becomes Music: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen Comes to Athens

Hundreds of white porcelain bowls drift across three circular pools of moving water, approaching one another, separating and occasionally colliding to produce delicate, crystalline sounds. This is clinamen, the visual and sound installation by French artist, composer and musician Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, presented at Onassis Mandra in Athens from September 26 to December 5, 2026. The Athens presentation marks the first time the work has been installed outdoors.

There is no musician and no fixed score. The bowls follow a gentle current, their movements determined by the flow of the water, while each contact produces a different acoustic response. A bowl may move steadily across the pool before meeting another, drift away and then return, or remain apart for several moments. The resulting soundscape is constantly changing, with each collision creating another version of the work.

Boursier-Mougenot first developed clinamen in 1997, and the installation has since evolved through more than twenty versions. Each presentation responds to its surroundings rather than being reproduced as an identical installation. The artist selects the individual porcelain bowls for their particular timbre, considering the sounds they produce when they resonate or collide. The ordinary ceramic bowl consequently becomes both a visual object and a musical instrument.

The title comes from the Epicurean concept of clinamen, which describes an unpredictable deviation in the movement of atoms. In the installation, this idea becomes a physical system. Boursier-Mougenot establishes the conditions but does not determine the exact sequence that follows. Water, gravity, movement and chance take over, creating a work without a fixed beginning, middle or end.

This approach is central to Boursier-Mougenot’s wider practice. Rather than composing music through traditional notation and performance, he creates systems in which everyday objects, water, movement and space generate sound in real time. The materials may be simple, but their behavior creates something that cannot be completely controlled or predicted.

Athens introduces another layer to the work. clinamen is installed at Onassis Mandra, a historic open-air theatre from the Belle Époque era on Dionysiou Areopagitou in Plaka. Here, the pools and bowls are exposed to changing light, air and ambient sounds rather than being enclosed within a gallery. The installation is consequently shaped not only by the water and porcelain but also by the atmosphere around it.

Weather can become part of that composition. The installation remains open during light rain, allowing the sound of falling water to enter the acoustic environment. In severe weather, access may be temporarily suspended. The work therefore remains responsive to conditions that would ordinarily be considered external to an artwork.

The simplicity of the materials is part of its appeal. Porcelain bowls are familiar domestic objects, yet their movement across water changes how they are perceived. Their shape, weight, resonance and contact with one another become the substance of the work. What the visitor sees and what the visitor hears are inseparable because every sound is produced by a visible physical encounter.

There is also no single version of clinamen to experience. Because the bowls never follow a predetermined sequence, two visitors arriving at different times will encounter different movements and sounds. Even a return visit on the same day can produce another arrangement. The work exists less as a finished composition than as a set of conditions through which composition continuously takes place.

The installation has previously been presented at institutions including the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, Park Avenue Armory in New York, SFMOMA in San Francisco, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Each location has provided a different architectural and atmospheric context for the work.

At Onassis Mandra, that relationship between artwork and setting becomes particularly pronounced. The historic theatre is no longer simply a backdrop. Its open-air character allows the work to remain connected to the city around it, while the water and porcelain create a quieter, self-contained field of movement within the space.

For the visitor, clinamen asks for little beyond attention. There is no narrative to follow and no conventional performance to watch from beginning to end. One can sit beside the pools and observe the gradual choreography of the bowls, listening as their movements produce sounds that exist only for that particular moment.

That may be the most distinctive quality of the work. Boursier-Mougenot does not attempt to eliminate chance from the artistic process. He builds a structure in which chance becomes the mechanism through which the work remains alive. In Athens, the water continues to move, the porcelain continues to meet and separate, and the surrounding environment becomes part of a composition that is never repeated.

Artist: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

Work: clinamen Venue: Onassis Mandra Location: Athens, Greece Dates: September 26 – December 5, 2026 Medium: Water, porcelain bowls, sound and movement Original Work: First developed in 1997 Entry Fee: €5 Official website: Onassis Foundation