Essay Ana Maria Lozano, 02/2005
From idiosyncratic to ideological
François Bucher is versatile, making use of two different supports depending on the demands of the question that is asked. Thus, his work fits into premises that are defined not by the support that he uses, but by his own stance, which is always analytical regarding cultural conventions displayed in popular, everyday realms, through various usages and policies of image.
Bucher's background as a plastic artist, as well as his work as a theoretician, defines his solid work. Being both a Colombia and a United States-based artist, he travels along distinct cultural contexts that provide him with the necessary information for his inquiries as a cultural theoretician. Within these realms, with lucidity, Bucher detects idiosyncratic and local configurations in seemingly globalized, homogeneous landscapes.
Aiming at the international recognition of his work, one of Bucher's pieces, White balance, takes place during the days after the attacks on the Twin Towers, in a hybrid piece comprised of various audiovisual media, ranging from documental to the capturing of TV image and audio. The piece reveals a poignant, authoral viewpoint, delivering a terrifying account that converts contemporary political issues that prompt extremely emotional reactions, and which are dangerously captured by the media, into explicit displays of xenophobia, racist demonstrations, and satanizations of the other.
The piece by Bucher reminds us of the attacks and rethinks many of the commonplace assumptions that, since then, have served as a day-to-day foundations for belligerance and fundamentalism. White balance depicts the everyday citizens, middle men and women who expose their opinions, and express their emotions. When presented by an autonomous media, these opinions reveal naked ideological stances that are cunningly hidden within a power discourse, ideological stances that prompt deep responses and reactions. Bucher's critical viewpoint, his ability to move like an amphibian, using resources that combine different media, allows his approach to penetrate gaps in hegemonic discourses, and to project them outwards.
On the other hand, just like many contemporary authors, Bucher has shown interest on television, which is a compendium of symbolic structures and an image-making space by excellence. Bucher runs the gamut of genres, establishing interferences by means of observer-commentators who mediatize, analyze, translate it into global as well as local terms, creating an abnormal circuit, a bidirecionality which reformulates the media, and becomes it exposed, on several aspects, reveals its structures and devices.