Stefana McClure: Don’t Look Now and other films on paper

New York–based artist Stefana McClure’s drawings are re-creations of the dialogues from translated films.

Her laborious and complicated method entails copying the text from a frame of a subtitled film onto an individual sheet of tracing paper. Frame by frame, sheet by sheet, she traces the translation of the entire film. Then, she retraces the language from each individual sheet of tracing paper onto a single piece of transfer paper. The tracing paper sheets align over the transfer paper so that the subtitles fall where they would on the screen. Each successive subtitle overlays those that came before. Each sheet of tracing paper removes a bit of the transfer material in the shape of language — adding information by subtracting matter. The transfer paper abraded in the form of the dialogue is the product of the process.

While the drawings are exact replications of the film’s dialogue, even the most careful examination of a drawing fails to reveal either the text it is based upon or any visual resemblance to the film — a comment perhaps on the effects of time, memory and translation on meaning.