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Omer Fast "Godville"

Press release

Omer Fast "Godville" January 7 - February 18, 2006

Godville is a two-channel video edited from interviews with several eighteenth-century character interpreters in Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum in Virginia. The museum is actually part of the historical town it recreates, occupying and preserving the town’s buildings and grounds, while training and paying its residents to act out colonial American life.

The ten persons originally interviewed represent a cross-section of Williamsburg's resident actors: men and women of different social standing and origin; democrats and republicans; property holders and day laborers; militia members and housewives; part-time revolutionaries and slaves. All sat down to be interviewed in their work areas and costumes, usually eighteenth-century interiors and period garments.

The interviews began in the past and in-character but deliberately jumped to the present and real life - sometimes making it hard to keep track of which of the interviewees' multiple personalities was talking or which century was being discussed. By further cutting, pasting and remixing the interviews, a new narrative emerges whose temporal markers are blurred and where the two biographies of each speaker are blended into a single rambling whole. Godville tells the story of a town whose residents are unmoored and floating somewhere in America, between the past and the present, between reenactment, fiction and life.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of illustrated short stories based on the encounters with the ten character interpreters originally interviewed for the video.

An edition of this serie will be available during the exhibition.

Text translation (video and drawings) : Gauthier Herrmann

Omer Fast is born in 1972 in Jérusalem (Israël). He lives and works in Berlin.

In 2002, gb agency presented his first solo show.

Exhibition views

Godville is a two-channel video constructed from interviews with eighteenth-century character interpreters in Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum in Virginia, USA. The museum actually occupies the historical town that it recreates, administering to the preservation of the town‚s buildings and grounds, while training and paying its residents to act out Colonial American life.

The ten character interpreters originally interviewed for the work represent a cross-section of the town‚s resident reenactors: men and women of varying social standing and origin; democrats and republicans, property holders and day laborers, militants and housewives, part-time revolutionaries and professional slaves. All of them sat down to be interviewed in their work areas and in their work clothes, usually eighteenth-century domestic interiors and period garments. The interviews usually began in the past and in-character, with a question about what‚s going on in the town. However, subsequent questions quickly jumped around time out of the past, into the present and back making it hard to keep track of which of the interviewee‚s multiple personalities is talking at any particular moment and which particular moment in time is actually being talked about.

The video tries to clear the confusion through alchemy. By cutting and pasting, sampling and remixing the reenactors‚ words, the two tracks of each interview are synthesized into a single rambling whole. It tells the story of a town whose residents are unmoored and floating somewhere in America between the past and the present, reenactment, fiction and life.

Godville is a two-channel video constructed from interviews with eighteenth-century character interpreters in Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum in Virginia, USA. The museum actually occupies the historical town that it recreates, administering to the preservation of the town‚s buildings and grounds, while training and paying its residents to act out Colonial American life.

The ten character interpreters originally interviewed for the work represent a cross-section of the town‚s resident reenactors: men and women of varying social standing and origin; democrats and republicans, property holders and day laborers, militants and housewives, part-time revolutionaries and professional slaves. All of them sat down to be interviewed in their work areas and in their work clothes, usually eighteenth-century domestic interiors and period garments. The interviews usually began in the past and in-character, with a question about what‚s going on in the town. However, subsequent questions quickly jumped around time out of the past, into the present and back making it hard to keep track of which of the interviewee‚s multiple personalities is talking at any particular moment and which particular moment in time is actually being talked about.

The video tries to clear the confusion through alchemy. By cutting and pasting, sampling and remixing the reenactors‚ words, the two tracks of each interview are synthesized into a single rambling whole. It tells the story of a town whose residents are unmoored and floating somewhere in America between the past and the present, reenactment, fiction and life.

Godville is a two-channel video constructed from interviews with eighteenth-century character interpreters in Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum in Virginia, USA. The museum actually occupies the historical town that it recreates, administering to the preservation of the town‚s buildings and grounds, while training and paying its residents to act out Colonial American life.

The ten character interpreters originally interviewed for the work represent a cross-section of the town‚s resident reenactors: men and women of varying social standing and origin; democrats and republicans, property holders and day laborers, militants and housewives, part-time revolutionaries and professional slaves. All of them sat down to be interviewed in their work areas and in their work clothes, usually eighteenth-century domestic interiors and period garments. The interviews usually began in the past and in-character, with a question about what‚s going on in the town. However, subsequent questions quickly jumped around time out of the past, into the present and back making it hard to keep track of which of the interviewee‚s multiple personalities is talking at any particular moment and which particular moment in time is actually being talked about.

The video tries to clear the confusion through alchemy. By cutting and pasting, sampling and remixing the reenactors‚ words, the two tracks of each interview are synthesized into a single rambling whole. It tells the story of a town whose residents are unmoored and floating somewhere in America between the past and the present, reenactment, fiction and life.