Today I had the chance to attend the opening of an exhibition that will arguably be the quietest place in the city this summer. French artist and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s installation “clinamen” has opened its doors (and pools) in New York City, at the historic Park Avenue Armory.
The idea is shockingly simple: giant circular pools of piercingly blue water, with hundreds of white ceramic bowls floating on their surfaces. An invisible (unfortunately, visible) current slowly pushes them around, colliding with one another and… ringing. Each collision is a note. Every minute is a new, never-repeating score. It’s even reminiscent of the ringing of bells.
The installation plays on the philosophy of “pataphysics”—the science of imaginary solutions: no bowl moves along a predetermined trajectory, no collision is planned. What you hear, no one else will ever hear.
This premiere has a beautiful, circular history. Boursier-Mougenot first showed “clinamen” in 1997, and one of the earliest versions of the work was exhibited in New York, at the Paula Cooper Gallery in 1999 and 2000.
Since then, the installation has toured the world: SFMOMA in San Francisco, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the Asian Culture Center in Gwangju, Korea. In the summer of 2025, version v.10 created a sensation at the Parisian Bourse de Commerce (Pinot Collection), where an 18-meter pool with bowls was located directly under the rotunda’s glass dome, reflecting the sky.
And now, more than 25 years later, clinamen is returning to New York. The entire 5,100-square-meter Arsenal, one of New York City’s largest open-air spaces, is dedicated to it.
Interestingly, Boursier-Mougenot himself was born in Nice in 1961 and began not as an artist but as a composer: from 1985 to 1994, he wrote music for director Pascal Rambert’s Parisian theater company. Then, the stage became too small for him, and he began constructing “instruments” from the most unexpected materials: water, dishes, balloons, bees, a piano, and even live birds.
The work itself leaves a wonderful aesthetic impression. The strong visual experience (content creators from Instagram and TikTok will be especially pleased) complements the audio experience beautifully.
Visitors information
📍Park Avenue Armory / 643 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065
Admission: tickets are $30 and can be purchased at armoryonpark.org
Schedule: June 10 – August 2, 2026
Children: allowed (recommended age 6 and up) – children are fascinated by the movement of the bowls, but there are no sides to the pools, so please hold your little ones’ hands
