White Screen was an online project exploring the relationship between the written word and the moving image. Conceived in collaboration between FVU and The White Review, White Screen aimed to encourage a dialogue between present and past, text and moving image, film and digital media in an online context. Once a marginalised and underfunded form, artists’ moving image is as common to contemporary art as photography, painting, performance and sculpture. The exponential growth of digital networks, meanwhile, has enabled new forms of encounter and exchange, and provided fresh contexts for reception of artists’ moving image.

Drawing on FVU’s twenty-five year history of commissioning, producing and supporting artists’ film, White Screen enabled important works to be accessed afresh by a generation who might not otherwise have encountered them. These encounters, crucially, were mediated through text – essays, polemics, and personal reflections. Reflecting on the changing role of artists’ moving image in the digital age – its production, consumption and dissemination – each new essay provided a contemporary response to a historical moment.