Provocative Swiss Artist To Make Diamonds Out Of His Own Faeces

A provocative Swiss artist has raised eyebrows by announcing his intention to make diamonds out of his own faeces.

Christoph Buechel, 55, has said he also wants to turn every single one of his previous works of art that are still in his possession into diamonds.

He intends to do this by extracting carbon from his faeces and his artworks and converting it into graphite.

Christoph Buchel, artist to make a diamond out of his own faeces. (Newsflash)

The graphite will, in turn, be pressed for several weeks under a pressure of 80,000 bar and at a temperature of over 1,800 degrees Celsius to turn it into diamonds.

This process results in diamonds that are chemically, physically, atomically and optically identical to those that form naturally in the Earth’s interior over billions of years.

The eyebrow-raising project by the artist, who hails from the city of Basel, was reported in Swiss media last week.

The project of Christoph Buchel, artist, The Mosque, 2015. (Newsflash)

Buechel is no stranger to controversy, having hit headlines for transforming Venice’s 10th-century Church of the Abbey of Misericordia into a generic mosque for the city’s 2015 Biennale.

He would later go on to suggest that prototypes for Donald Trump’s Mexico–United States border wall should be protected as a national monument.

He returned to Venice to display ‘Barca Nostra’, the wreckage of a fishing boat that had sunk with hundreds of migrants aboard, for the 2019 Biennale.

The project of Christoph Buchel, artist, The Mosque, 2015. (Newsflash)

Buechel says he wants his latest project, which is entitled ‘The Diamond Maker – The Estate’, to draw attention to the commercialisation of the art scene.

The project is not scheduled to be completed until after the artist’s death.