44 In that sense, it is not a <strong>le</strong>gacy one can capitalize on but an irreparab<strong>le</strong> <strong>de</strong>bt to come. Therefore, <strong>Reynald</strong> <strong>Drouhin</strong> keeps the promise of the mosaic. Traditionally, it is inseparab<strong>le</strong> from the supporting architecture. It is only since the Renaissance that the image can <strong>de</strong>tach itself from the wall and become mobi<strong>le</strong>. The artist sets out to overthrow that tradition, going back to the origins, proposing something incredib<strong>le</strong>: the basic unit will be a particu<strong>la</strong>r image. The only referent to the origin of an image is another image, and that origin weaves the multip<strong>le</strong>, ramified links of the web, our culture’s seismographic symptom. That formal peg will allow to join what was and what will come and <strong>de</strong>velop a Pathosformel. Art dies, is born again and history again begins, it is again the same thing, and yet different every time. To return to the question of the mosaic, contradiction and repetition, <strong>Drouhin</strong> does not imitate the Ancients. No gran<strong>de</strong>ur, <strong>de</strong>ca<strong>de</strong>nce or renaissance, he enters the time of memory. Survivance, the returning ghost of that form, does not obey the mo<strong>de</strong>l of transmission which the archetypal ................... 1. In 1993, David B<strong>la</strong>ir <strong>de</strong>veloped a totally different approach, this heritage is still perceived today as a promise to come with the WaxWeb project: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/wax/ 2. Georges Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante - Histoire <strong>de</strong> l’art et temps <strong>de</strong>s fantômes selon Aby Warburg, Minuit, Paris, 1992. 3. Acronym for Eco<strong>le</strong> Nationa<strong>le</strong> Supérieure <strong>de</strong>s beaux-arts, referring to the School of Fine Arts of Paris. (TN) 4. Jean-François Lyotard, Hei<strong>de</strong>gger et “<strong>le</strong>s juifs”, Galilée, Paris, 1988. 5. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Généalogie <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> mora<strong>le</strong>, Gallimard, Paris, 1985. 6. Jacques Derrida, La Voix et <strong>le</strong> Phénomène, PUF, 1967. 7. Refer to the notion of spatial montage in the works of Eisenstein and Vertof, as well as Bill Seaman and Lev Manovich renewing that concept. 8. Bernard Stieg<strong>le</strong>r, La technique et <strong>le</strong> temps, 3 volumes, Galilée. 9. Martin Hei<strong>de</strong>gger, Qu’appel<strong>le</strong>-t-on penser?, PUF, 1959, p. 90. 10. A<strong>le</strong>xandre Kojève, L’idée du déterminisme dans <strong>la</strong> physique, Le Livre <strong>de</strong> Poche, Paris,1990. 11. Lev Manovich, Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2001. 12. Jacques Derrida, De <strong>la</strong> Grammatologie, Minuit, Paris, 1968. 13. Jay David Bolter et Richard Grusin, Remediation: Un<strong>de</strong>rstanding New Media, MIT Press, 1999. 14. One could think of Gebhard Sengmül<strong>le</strong>r’s, imitation of ancient works of art by more recent works of art would assume, but the incessant trans<strong>la</strong>tion, saying something instead of something else, speaking in the name of all but oneself. To this end, one needs a print, the mosaic, and also disp<strong>la</strong>cements of space and time, and finally, an antithesis, the image within the image which <strong>de</strong>constructs the re<strong>la</strong>tion between discretion and continuity. Choosing the mosaic as origin is adopting an imprint which formally avoids all localized pathos. Origin as such has never existed. The artist produces an opening in the survival process: the disturbing recursion of an image of an image of an image. Difference in repetition, discontinuity of time and sight. <strong>Reynald</strong> <strong>Drouhin</strong> invites us to a genealogy of the image which is distance within origin. “Repetition is constituted only through and within the disguises affecting the terms and re<strong>la</strong>tions of series of reality; but that is so because it <strong>de</strong>pends on the virtual object as if it were an immanent instance, whose particu<strong>la</strong>r quality is the disp<strong>la</strong>cement (…) if pushed, only what is strange is familiar, and only difference repeats itself.” 15 VinylVi<strong>de</strong>o, which inscribes vi<strong>de</strong>o images on vinyl records. Since the sixties, this media trans<strong>la</strong>tion has been possib<strong>le</strong> thanks to another phenomenon, transfer: films are transferred to vi<strong>de</strong>os, these vi<strong>de</strong>os are transferred from one format to another, are digitized, then from a floppy disk to a DVD, etc. Data is no longer confined to a unique medium. Well what is more static than a mosaic? 15. Gil<strong>le</strong>s De<strong>le</strong>uze, Différence et Répétition, PUF, 1968, pp.138-145. ................... * In English in the original text. (TN)
................... Revenances, 2000