CÉLESTE BOURSIER-MOUGENOT TAKES CLINAMEN OUTDOORS in athens
After floating through the grand interiors of Paris’ Bourse de Commerce and New York’s Park Avenue Armory, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen is moving outside. From September 26th to December 5th, 2026, the French artist’s endlessly shifting sound installation occupies the renovated Onassis Mandra in Athens, where hundreds of white porcelain bowls drift across three circular pools, colliding softly to create an ever-changing aquatic score.
First conceived in 1997, clinamen has never been a fixed installation. Water, porcelain bowls, circular basins, and the gentle currents set the vessels in motion, and yet every presentation produces a different configuration, sound, and rhythm. More than twenty iterations have followed the original work, each adjusted to the architecture and acoustics of its host.
For its latest version, the biggest variable is no longer simply the building around it. For the first time, clinamen is being presented outdoors, exposing the work to the particular conditions of its new setting in the center of Athens. At Onassis Mandra, the bowls share their soundscape with the city, as well as with shifting sunlight, wind, voices, surrounding sounds, and potentially rain. The move outside is also a departure for Boursier-Mougenot himself, who had previously resisted the idea. ‘People wanted to put it outside. I said no. It’s an indoor piece,’ he explains during the press preview in Athens attended by designboom.
all images by © Margarita Yoko Nikitaki, unless stated otherwise
when the city becomes part of the score
In Athens, the installation becomes an open system, set within the open-air setting of Onassis Mandra, the surviving Belle Époque outdoor theater located beside the Onassis Library and Dionysiou Areopagitou. ‘It needs to be perfectly balanced,’ Boursier-Mougenot says of the work’s relationship with its surroundings. ‘It has to be perfect when there is no wind, no rain. And then if suddenly the breeze comes, it’s going to be perfectly balanced.’ A passing gust can alter the movement of the bowls; a change in light can transform the appearance of the water; rain can introduce another layer to the composition. The title of the work refers to the Epicurean concept of the clinamen, the unpredictable deviation in the movement of atoms, and this idea of small departures is central to how the installation operates.
Each porcelain bowl has been individually selected by Boursier-Mougenot for its particular timbre, allowing every collision to contribute a slightly different sound. As the bowls approach, separate, and meet again, they produce delicate, bell-like tones without the presence of a performer. There is no score to follow and no fixed sequence to repeat. It’s the movement of the water that continuously generates the sound. ‘For Boursier-Mougenot, this interest in movement goes back to his early relationship with music. ‘I was fascinated by the movement, by the gesture, by the action, to produce sound,’ he notes. ‘The only message I want to convey is an invitation to inhabit a space that I have designed especially for them,’ says Boursier-Mougenot.
The city remains audible around the pools. Traffic, voices, birds, footsteps, wind, and rain mingle with the sound of porcelain, so the installation never sounds the same twice. The weather becomes part of it too, with a sudden shower adding its own rhythm to the bowls moving across the water. The artist also sees chance as a recurring force in his wider practice. ‘Many of my works have been made by coincidence,’ he shares during the preview. ‘It’s crazy. I have many, many stories to tell.’ In Athens, clinamen puts that idea to a new test, allowing an outdoor environment to introduce variables that previous presentations could largely control.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen is moving outside
the French artist’s endlessly shifting sound installation at Onassis Mandra in Athens | image © designboom
clinamen puts that idea to a new test in Athens | image © designboom
hundreds of white porcelain bowls drift across three circular pools | image © designboom
each porcelain bowl has been individually selected by Boursier-Mougenot for its particular timbre
Estudio EA