This article is very helpful in terms of understanding or critically assessing the work of François Bucher (b. 1972) because it draws its conclusions based on the elements used by the Colombian artist: comments on the conditions involved in the production and exhibition of contemporary art. José Ignacio Roca (b. 1962) notes the use of the camera as just another character in the recording of the “film-tape” Twin Murders (1999), therefore exposing the unreality of the space and the characters involved. Bucher uses audiovisual production resources as mechanisms and strategies for the creation of a visual language, and incorporates them as the critical engine in his work.
It is interesting to note how Roca manages to develop the subjects he sees in Twin Murders (1999), establishing a parallel between the film-tape and its most direct referent, Le mepris [Contempt] (1963), and applying the same logic that these two productions share in terms of the concept of a double, an original, and a copy. Roca also describes Bucher’s work as a sarcastic, ironic critique of “the learned aesthetic” of the contemporary visual language developed by a Third World artist like him. It is interesting to note the reference to the “Fait divers” [Miscellaneous Facts] that in (North) America announced the assassination attempt in which an identical twin was used as a stand-in for her sister; this idea was used as a thread throughout the work.
José Ignacio Roca is a Colombian curator and critic. His various curatorial projects include Phantasmagoria (2007–09) and Traces of Friday (2003). He was the cocurator at the Twenty-seventh São Paulo Biennial (Brazil, 2006), and general manager of the visual arts department at the Banco de la República. He is currently (in 2010) the artistic director of Philagrafika, an event presented at a number of venues in Philadelphia, United States, in 2010.
François Bucher studied literature and visual arts at the Universidad de los Andes. He took a graduate course in film at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was awarded first prize at the Iberian-American Video Festival Creation contest (2004), and the Werkleitz Award at the Transmediale Festival (Berlin, 2004). He currently (in 2010) lives and works in Berlin and Bogotá.