Skip to main content

Forever Live: The Case of K. Gun

François Bucher

2006 00:12:35 Colombia, Germany, United KingdomFrenchColorMono4:3DV video
Tags:
History, Installation, Language, Literature, Middle East, Politics

Description

This installation is based on the re-enactment of Franz Kafka’s allegory "Before the Law", interpreted live over a telephone line by Katharine Gun. Gun was a translator (specializing in Chinese to English translations), working with the British secret service, who chose to leak information compromising the U.S. and U.K. governments in their push for a U.N. resolution for the invasion of Iraq. Gun disclosed their plans to illegally wiretap the delegations of the Security Council holding the balance of power at the U.N.  She was acquitted when it became clear to the government of the U.K. that her court case would become a trial on the war’s legality.  At the time of Bucher’s recording, Kafka’s text was completely new to Gun, as she translated the allegory live from Chinese to English.

In 2005 Bucher met Katharine Gun in her hometown in Cheltenham, England. They agreed to collaborate on a project that entailed remobilizing her image within the parameters of a different discourse; one that would steal her image from the trivializations of media terminology, such as “whistle blower” and reconnect her action to a more significant dimension.  This is the first part of that project.

About François Bucher

François Bucher is an artist from Cali, Colombia living and working in Berlin. Bucher graduated with a Masters in Film from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was awarded a fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. His work and research spans a wide range of interests and media, focusing on problems relating to the ethical and esthetic problems of cinema and television an more recently to questions about the image in the inter dimensional field.

Bucher has been active as writer for theory books and journals - Saving the Image, Art after Film, In The Poem About Love you Don't Write The Word Love, The Journal of Visual Culture, Estudios Visuales, E-flux Journal, Valdez Magazine (founding editor) amongst others - over the past years as well as being invited to give lectures in seminars and symposia reflecting on issues relating to the image in contemporary culture: LABoral, Gijón, CENDEAC, Murcia, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Nations Plaza, Berlin, Universidad Nacional, Bogotá. 

Bucher's work has been exhibited and screened internationally in venues including, Tate Britain, Oberhausen Film Festival, Whitney Museum ISP, New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center, Rotterdam Film Festival, Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies, Argos Arts, Brussels, Film Museum, Brussels, Arsenal, Berlin, Kunsthalle, Budapest, Momentum, Nordic Biennial,00 Prague Biennial 03, 05, Werkleitz Biennial, 06, Tessaloniki Biennial 07, Mercosul Biennial 09, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Documenta, XII Magazine Project,  Museo Reina Sofia, Santa Monica Art Museum, LA, Stanton Museum, Houston, MUSAC - Museo Contemporáneo de Castilla y León.  

His work has been awarded several prizes, amongst them, the first prize at VideoEx, 2003, Zurich; The Prize of the Jury in Videolisboa, Lisbon, 2003, First prize at Premio a la Videocreación Iberoamericana, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, MUSAC, 2004, the Werkleitz Award 2004 in Transmediale, Berlin, a Director’s Citation at the Black Maria Film Festival, 2004 and the second prize at Fair Play, Berlin, 2007. He was twice nominated for the New Media Fellowship of the Rockefeller Foundation, 2005 and 2007. He is a recipient of The New York City Media Arts Grant of The Jerome Foundation, 2000.  In 2009 he was awarded the Grant from Cajasol in Andalucía.

Bucher is currently a Guest Professor and PhD candidate  at the Art Academy at Umeä University, Sweden.