#233 Paper Cups - Lebanon

The number of imprints refers to the protests in Lebanon in 2019. The monthly charge for using WhatsApp for 6$ ignited protests, unleashing discontent in the country. The work is about the cost of living and neoliberal policies. Our dependence on material circumstances is our primary condition, and the struggle for a fair distribution of economic resources might be the one with the most subversive potential.

Paper Cups is a series of paintings with imprints from regular paper cups. The kind you get from fast food places is often used by people begging in the streets. The series takes its starting point in economic resources and begging as a subversive act in a system of capitalism and neoliberal policies.

 It is also about the priority of material conditions in a broader sense, as in historical materialism, but also as in gaining agency for demands as a group. For a protest to transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic in a psychoanalytical sense, it must ground its ideas in practical solutions. It needs to become a movement, as in a subject - an agent with the power to act. This entails touching base with the void of the material Real, where the pureness of the intent - the initial message, always will get somewhat polluted and distorted.

Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. Thus, they function as a recording device and document the event while the filler is 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.