White Balance (to think is to forget differences) is an effort to uncover the geographies of power, the frontiers of privilege. It revisits this problem from different angles, creating short circuits of meaning which are hosted by improbable audiovisual matches. Media and internet footage is intermixed with images shot in downtown Manhattan before and after the September 11th attacks. The video presents a question that needs to be visited over and over, a question that is always and necessarily larger then ourselves.White Balance (to think is to forget differences) is an effort to uncover the geographies of power, the frontiers of privilege. It revisits this problem from different angles, creating short circuits of meaning which are hosted by improbable audiovisual matches. Media and internet footage is intermixed with images shot in downtown Manhattan before and after the September 11th attacks. The video presents a question that needs to be visited over and over, a question that is always and necessarily larger then ourselves. Yvonne Rainer asked this question in her film Privilege: "…is ‘permanent recovering racists’ the most we can ever be?" In this sense, offering a meta narrative that would pretend to describe the issues at stake is a failure to understand the layers of unspeakability that are hidden in the question of whiteness. The piece opts for a poetic language, an address that seeks to arouse thought by concentrating on the openings of the audiovisual experience, in the short-lived moment of the in-between.
White Balance (to think is to forget differences)
François Bucher
2002 00:32:00 United StatesEnglishColorStereo4:3VideoDescription
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.