Bien Carel
Works

1 week, 148 stones (2025)

I spend a week on Island of Brienenoord claying stones everyday

The first day I got there, it was raining and cold. With some people we collected clay from the ground on the side of the island next to the water. without knowing what i was going to make, I started to feel the clay, removing the sand, and making it softer. It started taking shape in my hand. at some point, I looked at what the clay had become and it seemed to resemble a stone. I kept the shape the way it was, smoothening the surface of it. The first stone was made.
The bench I sat for the whole week

continuously doing the same thing
the clay decided the shape, as well as I
moment which is never the same

a routine or a ritual or a performance or an action

I did not want to ‘solidify’ the stones. At the end of the week, I put them back at the spot where we got the clay, so it would dissolve back in the ground. However, I still couldn’t resist putting one in a kiln made by other people that week, and having that one as a souvenir.

A week later, I went to the same place again. It had rained. Most stones disappeared

Repetition dissolved

Obsessive repetition - reduced to ‘nothing’

Memento Mori - Veritas Existentiae  


I took some of the stones to a small beach at the island, and tried skipping them on the water