1000 Iterations (30.000ml)
“If repetition is possible, it is due to miracle rather than to law.... If repetition exists, it expresses at once a singularity opposed to the general…”
This ongoing project examines the philosophical implications of self-replication through the production of 1000 handcrafted espresso cups. While each vessel adheres to the essential form of the first prototype, the work inherently challenges the very possibility of perfect duplication. Repetition never produces the identical but rather generates subtle differences within apparent sameness.
The endless copying becomes both methodology and subject matter. By engaging in this deliberate act of reproducing one's own creative output 1000 times, the work interrogates how creation itself is transformed when consciously repeated. The cups—each holding roughly 30ml and collectively containing 30,000ml—function as material manifestations of time passing and creative labor accumulating.
Working without a defined timeline, the project embraces material contingency. Each cup records the specific conditions of its making through varying clay bodies and glazes available at that moment in the studio.
Through this process, the work contemplates the paradox of reproduction: that the self attempting to copy itself must inevitably create something new. The 1000 cups become artifacts of an extended meditation on repetition as a transformative act—one that reveals how closely observed similarity ultimately illuminates the impossibility of the truly identical.
Three cups from late 2024
Clay and glaze materials collected in Lower Austria