Formula B

In 2000 Job Koelewijn produced a work comprising the text ‘No Matter Try Again Fail Again Fail Better’ in the water of the Westersingel. The text, which is taken from Samuel Beckett’s short novel Worstward Ho can be read from the sculpture terrace on the bank of the Westersingel.

Koelewijn’s idea to make a text piece was inspired by viewing the water as a blank sheet on which one could write. ‘Just like you used to stand on the beach and write your thoughts in the water’ he explains. The words appear as bubbles on the surface of the water, produced by a stream of air pumped through a perforated system of tubes.