First exhibited during his solo show, tomás saracenoi, at neugerriemschneider in Berlin, Flashing Toilets is a free-standing toilet whose inner plumbing has been reconfigured to be able to recycle handwashing water for flushing. Instead of draining away after hands are washed, each litre of water would be used twice. Initial proposals to re-route the gallery’s existing plumbing could not be realised, limited by constraints of tenancy and regulation. Placed as a sculptural presence, it becomes a proof of concept for a system, already in use across all of the artist’s studio’s toilets, that if realized in a gallery context could save up to 14,000 liters of water per year—approximately the annual use of a standard household toilet in Germany. Saraceno’s intervention stands instead as an autonomous response, ready(-made) to connect differently to cycles of water and life. As a functioning prototype, the work opens a small proposition for shifting the metabolism of institutions and homes toward more regenerative flows.

As a functioning prototype, the sculpture can be brought into use beyond its exhibition, integrating its principle of circularity into daily life. It is both a work and a device: a proposition for shifting the metabolism of institutions and homes toward more regenerative relations.

In its lineage, the artwork recalls a century of reflection on the relation between art and the everyday. If Duchamp’s Fountain removed the toilet from its function to expose the mechanisms of art, Flashing Toilets reinstates its use to expose the mechanisms of life. Through its simple modification, attention is drawn to the scale at which ecological change often begins: in the minor and the infrastructural. The object retains its purpose, but its logic turns. Where waste once began, renewal now flows.