Drawing After – modular reiteration as research method

Visual reiteration can be thought of in terms of linguistic translation. As well as similarities between these two areas – attention to detail and the development of a rich vocabulary – visual reiteration inevitably falls foul of the same ‘deforming tendencies’, proposed by theorist Antoine Berman in his essay ‘Translation and trials of the foreign’. The act of translation/redrawing also seeks to represent a source, plotting a trajectory away from that source, while never quite escaping it, and acknowledging the gap between precursor and product in a way that replicas deny. This article, which accompanies and contextualizes images made as part of the research, outlines how a modular approach to the making of a particular work of art widens the scope and clarifies this enquiry.