The artwork was developed from an archival portrait of S.I. Witkiewicz and the artist's own self-portrait.The work draws on the paramagical forms of posing together for a photograph. Communication here turns into its own opposite – it masks the moments of disintegration, failure and collapse in the process of reaching an understanding. These are phenomena usually concealed with great care, by means of formatting techniques, in every medium and every sphere of life.

The phrase “what is the word” is a direct reference to Samuel Beckett’s last work, written in response to the writer’s loss of consciousness and the disturbance of speech that followed. It was in these extreme circumstances that the 82-year-old author found the form of utterance he had been seeking throughout his work.