![\"Bertrand_Retranscription](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Retranscription-de-Antigone-scaled.jpg\")
<\/strong>Retranscription de Antigone<\/em>, 2015.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Since 2008, the Qu\u00e9becois artist Simon Bertrand has worked to retranscribe major works in the history of literature. In a way adopting the posture of the scribe, he has devoted himself to the monastic labour of recopying works in their entirety, among them a selection of foundational texts such as the Bible, Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em>, Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em>, and The Epic of Gilgamesh. <\/em>In contrast to traditional copyists, Bertrand does not transcribe the works in order to create new codices but to create drawings that allow the whole work to be seen in a single glance.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - So that the text covers the entire canvas without it being necessary to later alter its size, the artist first measures how much space one retranscribed page takes up on a sheet of paper, then multiplies this area by the book\u2019s number of pages.<\/span> Thus Retranscription of L\u2019Odyss\u00e9e <\/em>(2008\u20132010) occupies a surface of 92 by 122 centimetres, while Retranscription of la Bible\u200a\u2014\u200aNouvelle traduction<\/em>, begun in 2009 and currently half-finished, will extend across more than four metres once completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Revealing an entire narrative on one surface does not correspond to a book\u2019s logic, which, at first glance, offers a fragmented representation of its contents (the spine on the bookshelf, the cover, or the page). Therefore, the transposition of a literary work to one sheet of paper significantly transforms our relationship to it, and, even though they remain perfectly legible, the texts laid out in this way are more difficult to take in. It is the aesthetic of the written form that is initially striking in these drawings. Bertrand\u2019s project situates the viewer-reader in an unstable position between the image and the text. As much as the former could not exist without the latter (the image is<\/em> the text) and both have meaning only through the process that generates them (the work is a performance, or at least its trace), still the work demands the assuming of different positions (enabling reading<\/em> or look\u00ading<\/em>) for its reception. Thus, given the risk of limiting one\u2019s attention to the image\u2019s aesthetic technique and removing part of the work\u2019s meaning, one needs to engage actively, armed with a magnifying glass to decipher the miniscule writing and discover the story being recounted. This mode of being challenged by the text is at the origin of all of Bertrand\u2019s practice, in which the hybrid form between drawing, performance, and literature echoes the textual turn of conceptual art. Here, to experience the narrative is not essentially a theoretical proposition but literally a physical test, a labour demanding submission to strict and predefined rules in a process where time and duration play an important role. The result is an entirely new narration of the foundational texts, which is not presented solely through the content of the prose, but rather enriched by the trace of the artist\u2019s gesture, his movements across the canvas, the trembling and awkwardness of his hand, the errors, the deletions. Spread out over months or years, the work is fastidious, monotonous, and both physically and visually challenging. Its slow execution clashes with the current hypermediated environment affecting literature, in which texts appear and are transformed at an extraordinary speed. Bertrand\u2019s work is situated in opposition to the hypertext, returning us to a space-time well before the digital age\u200a\u2014\u200aeven well before the age of printing\u200a\u2014\u200aand evoking a certain nostalgia for handwriting, which almost does not exist anymore in such a sustained form.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n The retranscriptions are grouped in series (The Beginnings<\/em>, Foundation<\/em>, and Atlas<\/em>), and overlap over longer or shorter periods.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Aside from Foundation<\/em>, which is the focus of this article, the series Atlas<\/em> is composed of freer retranscriptions of drama or poetry (including that of William Shakespeare, Paul \u00c9luard, and Arthur Rimbaud). The series The Beginnings <\/em>(2014\u200a\u2014\u200a2016) combines the retranscription of Kahlil Gibran\u2019s The<\/em> Prophet <\/em>and other mainly visual works. Making use of ancient texts necessarily raises questions as to their significance and import for the current moment of the twenty-first century. To ground his process, Bertrand is inspired in particular by Truth or Death: The Quest for Immortality in the Western Narrative Tradition<\/em>, in which Hentsch looks at foundational texts from a different angle. The philosopher distances himself from myths about the great narratives and \u201cclaims the freedom to read them as if they were virgin, new, unpublished.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Alexandre Prstojevic, \u201cRaconter et mourir,\u201d interview with Thierry Hentsch, Vox-Poetica<\/em>, www.vox-poetica.org\/entretiens\/intHentsch.html.<\/span> It thus seems that Bertrand\u2019s retranscription of Oedipus the King<\/em> moves away from Freud\u2019s famous psychoanalytic theory of infantile sexuality (which is particularly difficult to avoid), to evoke instead the quest for knowledge put forward by Hentsch, which \u201callows us to free ourselves of theoretical shackles and to restore the story to its rightful place, without sacrificing what we have learned from applying the tools of analysis.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Hentsch, Truth or Death<\/em>, 134.<\/span> In the rereading of the Symposium<\/em>, while Hentsch minimizes the speech of Diotima of Mantinea (\u201cDiotima\u2019s discourse [\u2026] is a dream, a divagation from which Alcibiade\u2019s alcoholic exaltation awakens us\u201d),7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Ibid, 172.<\/span> Bertrand chooses instead to make this the centre of his visual presentation. By spatially demarcating the words of Diotima, who, although absent from the gathering, is the only woman cited by Plato, the artist takes a position on the meaning he gives to the text and encourages us to do the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The works in the Foundation<\/em> series invite one to transcend the original texts, to appropriate their meaning or seek analogies in the situations of contemporary figures. The example of Antigone<\/em> is telling, given how literary and theatrical adaptations of it proliferate. Is it the narrative itself that is compelling, or the recurrence of certain interpretations that shape the collective imagination? The inescapable rereadings of Antigone as a contemporary figure of civil disobedience, as well as her appropriation by feminist movements, inevitably lead to viewing Sophocles\u2019 account retranscribed in red ink from an activist angle. But before granting the works a new contemporary life, by allowing this freedom of reading dear to Hentsch, it is important to remember that Bertrand\u2019s retranscriptions adhere strictly to the original texts (or at least to the chosen editions). In the wake of Truth or Death<\/em>, the Foundation<\/em> series proposes \u201cto restore the story to its rightful place.\u201d Thus, in order to go beyond the image-text and come back to it refreshed, it will be important to reconnect with the mythical narratives selected by the artist, and return to the books. And to do this, means once more walking among the shelves of a library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Bertrand_Retranscription](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Retranscription-du-Banquet.jpg\")
Retranscription du Banquet,<\/em> 2014, and detail.
Photos : courtesy of the artist
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bertrand_Retranscription](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Retranscription-du-Banquet2-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bertrand_Retranscription](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Retranscription-de-Oedipus-scaled.jpg\")
Retranscription de Oedipus<\/em>, 2015.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
See http:\/\/simonbertrand.net.<\/span> Each text appears as new writing<\/em>, during which the artist, by his aesthetic or procedural choices, orients our reading from the start. Retranscription of la Bible\u200a\u2014\u200aNouvelle traduction <\/em>extends across a vast linear path punctuated by deletions, which Bertrand associates with the journey, fraught with tests, of the Jewish people in exile. In Retranscription of L\u2019\u00c9pop\u00e9e de Gilgamesh<\/em> (2010\u20132014), the text continuously follows the contour of the canvas to form a square around an empty centre: the mourning of Gilgamesh. This circular trajectory of the king\u2019s voyage, his quest for immortality and his return to Uruk, is interrupted by multiple blank spaces; these are the gaps in the text, left by the disappearance of parts of the original clay tablets. In Sophocles\u2019 Antigone<\/em>, the interweaving of two impossible forms borrowed from Oscar Reutersv\u00e4rd underlines the defiance the heroine shows towards her uncle in opposing the unwritten law of God to Creon\u2019s royal decree, while in Le banquet,<\/em> two blank lines isolate the dialogue between Socrates and Diotima. Beyond the graphic choices that indicate the work\u2019s literary content (\u201cthe chapters are localities,\u201d the artist mentions in reference to Kahlil Gibran\u2019s The Prophet<\/em>, in which the first word of each chapter is written in boldface), the writing itself tells us about the process. The ink\u2019s colour, slightly different in places, along with the more loosely or tightly written sections leave many indications of the temporality of the retranscription and, perhaps, the artist\u2019s state of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Bertrand_Retranscription](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Retranscription-de-lepopee.jpg\")
Retranscription de l\u2019\u00c9pop\u00e9e de Gilgamesh<\/em>, 2010-2014, and detail.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bertrand_Retranscription](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Retranscription-de-lepopee2-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bertrand_Prophet\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO05_Babin_Bertrand_Prophet-scaled.jpg\")
The Prophet<\/em>, 2014-2015.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n