Language is intimately bound up with desire. This becomes especially evident in moments where language is absent—we feel compelled to fill the void. At other times, however, we take pleasure in the loss of language as a means of momentarily losing ourselves, a brief respite from the compulsive loop of self-consciousness.

Yet language does not merely govern speech and thought; it also permeates perception. We do not simply perceive the world as it is, but rather through the mediation of language—by casting a web of meaning over it. In doing so, whenever we identify or present something, we simultaneously obscure what might otherwise be there.

There is no true escape from this process, for the subject itself is constituted through language. Only on rare occasions, perhaps by stepping outside the grip of self-awareness, can we encounter something different—yet even then, we lack any clear knowledge of what is being experienced, or who, in fact, is doing the experiencing.

Work in progress video | Presentation video

Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give a statement of the event taking place while the filler was still wet.

Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.