Live performance unspecified times: Daily moment of medicine intake by Appie Bood for Piece four—USE ME Edition.

Floor installation of hand-manufactured pills 
Ten day pills inventory Appie Bood incorporated in installation
Tablet press machine
Set of intake conditions
—

“Presence in Absence” is a series by conceptual and performance artist Lisette Ros that she started in Mexico-City in 2023. She focuses on the perceptible act of presence in absence by examining ‘The Absent Body’.

PERFORMANCE
During the opening performance, artists Lisette Ros and Appie Bood search for and assemble the precise combination of substances that make up Bood’s daily intake. This act marks the beginning of a ten-day ritual in which Bood returns to the gallery at unspecified times to collect his medication from the floor installation and take it on site.

The scattered pills—magnesium, calcium, paracetamol, Passiflora, rheumatism tablets, and vitamin D—form both a landscape of residue and a body in absence. What usually dissolves within the body re-emerges as visible matter: a trace of maintenance, dependency, and survival. 

Through this shared gesture, Ros extends her ongoing investigation into “Presence in Absence”: rendering the absent body present through its substances, and exposing the fragile tension between care and control, sedation and endurance.

PIECE FOUR—USE ME Edition
As a follow-up to/in extension of “Presence in Absence” Piece three, this new work extends the series into a collaborative context within the group exhibition USE ME, initiated by Dutch artist Appie Bood. Including artists Aukje Dekker, Melle Hammer, Ray Fuego, Agata Zwierzynska and Lisette Ros, generously supported by AFK.

Where the previous piece explored Ros’s own presence (in absence) through the ingestion of a natural hypnotic, melatonin—an evening ritual tied to her experience with DSPS—this fourth piece shifts focus to another body. It translates Bood’s daily intake of medicinal substances (specified to pills) into an absent anatomy. What usually vanishes inside the body reappears as residue. 

Photos by Fee Golin
© Lisette Ros