Fortune Well

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Divinatory practices use a form of acausal thinking, which relies on our ability to meaningfully relate a prediction to an event. This practice is sometimes linked to water, to the reading of its ripples and swirls or to the behaviour of fish. The third and final device imagined by Felipe Ribon lets us interrogate water. Three glass tubes are filled with miraculous water, each with a distinctive colour so that the asker can choose which is a “yes”, a “no” or a “maybe”. The three tubes are linked by a spinning glass top, the tip of which is delicately balanced on a column that is itself raised by a cup. The mobile thus formed spins and oscillates. Disturbed by the question posed by the asker, unsettled by their query about the future, one of the tubes will quickly come to rest in the base basin closest to the mark. You have your answer.

Felipe Ribon,  Saint Moritz, Fortune Well, 2024
Borosilicate glass mobile
Produced by Jean Michel Wierniezky
Dimensions: D 240 mm x H 675 mm
Mudac Collection, Lausanne

Alpine stone basin
Produced by Panetti Marmi
Dimensions: L 1000 x W 600 x H 4 mm
Mudac Collection, Lausanne

Now to use

Several people can use this well at the same time.

  1. Take a piece of paper
  2. Write down your request
  3. For each column, choose the one that will say yes, the one that will say no, and the one that will say maybe.
  4. Place your request in the small central cup
  5. Follow the movement of the mobile until it stops turning
  6. Receive your answer and keep it to yourself.