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Omer Fast

Biography

Omer Fast Born in 1972 in Jerusalem, Israël. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Solo exhibitions

2009

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel

South London Gallery, London

Berkeley Museum, San Francisco

Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York

Performa, New York

2008

Betty Rymer Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Galerija Miroslav Karlijevic, Zagreb

Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver

gb agency, Paris

Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover

2007

Arratia/Beer, Berlin

Museum of Modern Art, Mumok, Vienna

Godville, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis

Contemporary Art Center, Vox Contemporary, Montreal

2006

Godville, gb agency, Paris

2005

Mixed Doubles (with Nam Jun Paik), Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh

Postmasters Gallery, New York

International Institute for Visual Arts, INIVA, London

Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2004

L’Atelier /CNP, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt; Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Posdam. (with Jeanne Faust)

Spielberg’s List, Liste 04, gb agency, Basel

2003

Fri-Art, Center for Contemporary Art, Friburg

Postmasters Gallery, New York

Project Room, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt

2002

A Tank Translated, Fiac Perspectives, gb agency, Paris

gb agency, Paris

Group exhibitions

2009

The same River Twice: Part 2, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst 2009, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin

Medium Religion, Model Arts and Niland gallery, Ireland

Polyglottolalia, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm

New Frontiers, Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah

2008

Present Tense, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderna, Las Palmas

Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool

Medium Religion, ZKM/ Museum for Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe

On the Subject of War, Barbican, London

The Green Room, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on- Hudson, New York

Manifesta 7, Trento

Visite: Von Gerhard Richter bis Rebecca Horn, Kunst und Austellungshalle, Bonn

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image/ Part II: Realisms, The Irshhorn Museum, Washington DC.

The Whitney Biennial 2008, Whitney Museum, New York

Les Inquiets, cinq artistes sous la pression de la guerre, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Biennale Cuvée, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.

Decoder: Selected Works from the 3rd Contour Biennial for Video Art, Center for Contemporary Art, Vilnius

Lügen nirgends, Ausstellungshalle Zeitgenösische Kunst, Münster

Signals in the Dark: Art in the Shadow of War, Blackwood Gallery / JM Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto, Toronto

Wandering in Contemporary Videoart, Magazzini del SaleMusei Civici, Siena

Pick - up, Stunck Kunstencentrum, Leuven

2007

Filmische Wahrheiten-Cinematic Realities Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg

The Colonial Show, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Mystic Truths, Auckland Art gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Contour Video Biennale, Mechelen

History Will Repeat Itself, Hartware Medienkunstverein, Dortmund / Travels to Kunstwerke, Berlin

Closed Circuit: New Media Acquisitions, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Visite: Contemporary Art in Germany, Center for Fine Arts, Brussels

Cross- Border, Museum of Art, Stuttgart

Re-, Site Gallery, Sheffield

Collateral, When Art looks at Cinema, Hangar Bicocca, Spacio d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan. (curated by Adelina Fürstenberg)

Raised by Wolves, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth

2006

We All Laughed at Christopher Columbus, Platform Garanti, Istanbul

Simulation Games, Edith Russ House, Oldenburg, Germany

I, Direct Ontology , Futura Gallery, Prague; Secession, Vienna

Why Pictures Now : New Media Acquisitions, Mumok, Vienna

Mercury in Retrograde, De Appel, Amsterdam

2005

Cut/ Film as Found Object, Milwaukee Art Museum (curated by Stefano Basilico). travels Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa

Narrow Focus, Tranzit, Bratislava (curated by Vit Havranek)

Second Sight, Prague Biennial, Czech National Museum, Prague (curated by Nadia Fischer)

The Imaginary Number, Kunstwerke, Berlin (curated by Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg)

Reprocessing Reality. New Perspectives on Art and the Documentary, (curated by Claudia Spinelli), Château de Nyon, Nyon. TRevls to PS1, New York

Covering the Real, Kunstmuseum, Basel. (curated by Hartwig Fischer)

Fair Use : Appropriation in Recent Film and Video, Hammer Museum, U.C.L.A, Los Angeles (curated by Matthew Thompson)

Faces in the Crowd / Volti nella Folla,Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli, Turin (curated by Carolyn Christov Bakargiev)

Life: Once More, Witte de With, Rotterdam (curated by Sven Lütticken)

2004

Faces in the Crowd / Volti nella Folla, The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (curated by Carolyn Christov Bakargiev)

Cut/Film as Found Object, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (curated by Stefano Basilico)

Pick up, Public, Paris (curated by Guillaume Désanges)

Voluntary Memory, Austrian Cultural Forum, London (curated by Alona Pardo)

Rear View Mirror, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (curated by Elizabeth Fisher)

Moving Picture Desire, Busan Biennale, Busan, Korea

Storytelling, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York

Facing Footage, (avec Jeanne Faust), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt

Video X, Momenta Art, Brooklyn

2003

Works from the Collection, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel

Film in der Kunst: Omer Fast and Jeanne Faust, Kultur Kreis Award, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam

Incommunicado, Sainsburry Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich; Edinburgh City Art Centre, Edinburgh (Traveling Exhibition organized by the Hayward Gallery)

Gestes d’attention, Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse

Hidden In a Daylight, Foksal Gallery Foundation in collaboration with 3rd Annual Film Festival, Cieszyn, Poland

Recent Acquisitions, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth

Kaap Helder, art from a natural source, Kunst en Cultuur Noord-Holland, Harlem

Media Field: politick, Williams College Museum of Art, Willimastown, MA

Arcadia, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ

In Media Res, Information, Contre-Information, galerie Art et Essai, Université Rennes

Contemporary Art/Recent Acquisitions’, Jewish Museum, New York

(based upon)True Stories, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam

Pol.i.tick, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

Voir Grand/Think Big, Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts, Montreal

2002

Inside-Out, 5th Festival of New Art in Berlin, Berlin

Monitor: Video II, Gagosian Gallery, New York

LISTE 02, The Young Art Fair, gb agency, Basel

Here and Now, Büro Friedrich, Berlin

While U Wait, MOT, London

Submerge, New art from NY, Kunstbunker Nürnberg, Nuremberg

Whitney Biennial 2002, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Second Site, Alumni Exhibition, Hunter College MFA Gallery, New York

2001

Video Jam, Institute of Contemporary Art , Palm Beach, Florida

Affinités Narratives, gb agency, Paris

Weak Architecture, Midway Initiative Gallery, St. Paul, Minnesota

Travelling Scholars, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Hors- Jeu, (Out of Bounds), gb agency, Paris

Salad Days, Bill Maynes Gallery, New York

Some New Minds, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York

Death Race 2000, Thread Waxing Space, New York

2000

Momenta Art Gallery , Brooklyn, New York (with Akiko Ichikawa)

Breakin’ In A New Partner, M.F.A Thesis Exhibition, Hunter College Art Gallery, New York

Bibliography

Press articles (selection)

2009

Elisabeth Lebovici and Maria Muhle, Omer Fast, Afterall, March

Barbara Casavecchia, Omer Fast, Redacting, Mousse Magazine

2008

Sarah Rosenbaum-Kranson, Interview Omer Fast, Museo

Philippe Reigner, Imagine, Journal des Arts, October

Chen Tamir, Omer Fast, New Magic Realism, Flash Art 114, October

Adrian Searle, Cowpokes and Yetis, The Guardian, September 23

Charlotte Higgins, Liverpool Biennial: A Patchy Event, Guardian, September 19

Mary Voelz Chandler, Two Perspectives on Truth, Rocky Mountain News, September 4

Bert Rebhandel, Omer Fast, Frieze, April

Blake Gopnik, Indelible Impressions, Washington Post, March

Tom Holert, Attention Span, Artforum, February

Astrid Mania, Omer Fast, the Casting, ArtReviews , January

Rainer Bellenbaum, Change of Dispositif III, Camera Austria 1001

Guillaume Désange, Omer Fast, Exit , February

Naoko Kaltschmidt, Wiederholung und Widerhall, issue 16 www.textem.de

Sean James Rose, Incertains Regards, Libération, February 19

Astrid Mania, Omer Fast at Arratia, Beer, Art Review, January

Thomas Seifert, Irak-Krieg, Kunst und Realität, Die Presse, January 4

Joanna Fiduccia, Omer Fast, Critic’s Pick Artforum, April

Peter Schjeldahl, Lessness,The Withney Biennial,The New Yorker, March 17

Blake Gopnik, Indelible Impressions,Washigton post, March 7

Bert Rebhandel, Back, Frieze, April

Joanna Fiduccia, A Multiple Eye, UOVO 7

Frank Westermeyer, The Casting, Schnitt Film Magazine, #48

2007

Omer Fast im MUMOK, Kunst-Bulletin, December

Mark Godfrey, Casting Doubt: Omer Fast at the Mumok, Vienna Texte Zur Kunst, #68, December

Dominikus Muller, Ohne Drehschluss Artnet, November 6

Dominik Kamalzadeh, Narben der Erinnerung Der Standard, October 19

Miriam Muller, Trau keinem Film trau keinen Bildern, Berliner Zeitung, October 30

2006

Simon Rees, Omer Fast at gb Agency Art US,Issue 13, May/June

Mark Godfrey, Making History Frieze, March/April

Thierry Davila, Omer Fast at gb agency ArtPress, March

Carly Berwick Penguins, Lies and Videotape Artnews, February

Alexandre Quoi, Omer Fast: Godville ParisArt, February

Claire Moulène, Omer Fast, A Paris Les Inrocktibles January 18-24

Elisabeth Lebovici, Passé Décomposé Libération, January

Joshua Mack, Omer Fast: Godville Modern Painters, January

2005

Nav Haq, Omer Fast Godville, Bidoun

Emily Hall, Omer Fast at Postmasters Artforum, December

Brian Boucher, Omer Fast at Postmasters Art in America, December

Eliza Williams, Omer Fast at InIVA, London ArtReview, December

Daniel Baird, Godville The Brooklyn Rail, November

Holland Cutter, Omer Fast at Postmasters New York Times, October 7

Rachel Withers, The Fast Lane The New Statesman, October 3

Bill O’Driscoll, Tell A Vision Pittsburgh City Paper, September 14

Sven Lütticken, Gated History Texte Zur Kunst, Volume 59, September

Ruth Lopez, Fresh Revisions Time Out / Chicago, July 21 – 28

Ulrich Gutmair, Macht nur soviel Ihr Könnt Netzeitung, August 2

Mary Abbe, Below the Radar Star Tribune, Minneapolis, May 27

Peter Campbell, At the Whitechapel London Review of Books, Vol.27, January 6

2004

Simon Gould, Voluntary Memory Contemporary, Issue 70, December 2004

Omer Fast Contemporary Visual Arts n°61, March 2004

Omer Fast au Centre national de la Photographie Les Inrockutibles, February-March

Jüdicaël Lavrador, La vidéo mode d’emploi, Journal du CNP, February

Sandra Danicke, Was wahr sein könnte Frankfurter Rundschau, February 4

Konstanze Crüwell, Eine Nagelschere fur den Vorgarten Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 28

2003

Felicity Lunn, Fiction or Reality Artforum, December

Jennifer Ostrower, Omer Fast at Postmasters Art in America, October

Anke Kempkes, Hidden in Daylight Frieze #78, October

Jennifer Allen, Openings: Omer Fast Artforum, September

Chris Chang, Vision: Omer Fast Film Comment, July/August

Brian Boucher, History, Memory, Fiction Published online bbs.thing.net, May

Rachel Stevens, Omer Fast at Postmasters Flash Art, May/June

Roberta Smith, Omer Fast at Postmasters New York Times, April 18

Peter Schgeldahl, Goings on about Town: Omer Fast at Postmasters New Yorker, April 21-28

David Deitcher, Get Real: Two contemporary Israeli artists subvert the documentary tradition, Time Out New York, April 10-17

Régis Durand, (based upon) true stories, Art Press, April

Silvia Rottenberg, Based upon true stories, De Witte Raaf, N°102, March/April

Silke Hohmann, Wenn ich Soldat bin Frankfurter Rundschau, February 19

Christoph Schütte, Blick aus dem Panzer Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 18

Jan Braet, De wereld ligt open, Knack Weekblad, n°7, February 12

Stéphane Roussel, Aux frontières du réel, D’ Letzenbuerger Land 7, February

Karin van Kooten, Een volle tank, NIW 22, Cultuur, February 7 Quarterly

Whitney Biennial 2002: American Blandstand, Village Voice, March 14

2002

Emmanuelle Lequeux, Omer Fast: Citoyen d’un Monde qui Cloche Le Monde, (Aden), June 19

Charlotte Laubard, Think Fast Technikart (Paris) issue 64, July-August

Holland Cotter, Never Mind the Art Police, These Six Matter New York Times, May 5

Holland Cotter, Art in Review: Second Site New York Times, March 21

Susan Wise, Omer Fast and Akiko Ichikawa at Momenta Art Williamsburg

2001

Holland Cotter, Art in Review : Some New Minds, NY Times, February 23

2000

Ken Johnson, Death Race 2000 New York Times, December 22

Susan Wise, Omer Fast and Akiko Ichikawa at Momenta Art, Williamsburg Quarterly

Publications

2008

Omer Fast, texte de Matthias Michalka, Mumok, Walter König Editions

2008 Biennial Exhibition, published by The Whitney Museum of American Art/Yale University Press

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, published by The Hirshhorn Museum,Washington D.C.

Les Inquiets: Cinq Artistes sous la Pression de la Guerre, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, Paris

The Casting, Monographie publiée par The Museum of Modern Art, Vienne et Walter König Verlag

2007

Book Future Amnesia, Pascale Cassagnau, Isthme éditions, Paris

Catalogue Mystic Truths, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand

2006

Why Pictures Now, published by Mumok, Vienna and Verlag fur moderne Kunst, Nurnberg

Report (Not Annoucement) published by Basis voor Aktuele Kunst, ed by Binna Choi

2005

Godville published by Midway Contemporary Art and Revolver Verlag

Experience, Memory, Reenactment Edited by Anke Bangma, Steve Rushton, Florian Wüst, published by Piet Zwart Institute

Cut/Film as Found Object Stefano Basilico, published by Milwaukee Museum of Art

Second Sight Prague Biennale, published by the National Galerie, Prague

The Imaginary Number Anselm Franke, published by Kunstwerke, Berlin

Covering the Real: Art and the Press Picture Hartwig Fischer, published by Museum of Fine Arts, Basel

Reprocessing Reality by Claudia Spinelli, Château de Nyon

Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art Sven Lütticken, published by Witte de With, Rotterdam

2004

Faces in the Crowd: Picturing Modern Life Iwona Blazwick, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, published by Skira Editore

Beyond Form Omar Calderon, Christine Calderon, Peter Dorsey, eds. Lusitania Press, New York

2003

Facing Footage: Film in Art, texts by Brigitte Weingart, Jennifer Allen, Bernhart Schwenk, published by Ars Viva, Kultur Kreis der deutschen Industrie

Cream 3: Contemporary Art in Culture Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Phaidon Press, London

Incommunicado Published by Hayward Gallery, London

Fast Forward: Media Art, Sammlung Goetz published by Ingvild Goetz, Munich

In Media Res: Information, Contre-Information’ Galerie Art & Essai, Universite Rennes

Printemps de Septembrer: Gestes published by Actes Sud, Toulouse

Hidden in a Daylight, Festival Era New Horizons in Ciezzyn, Gutek Film Ltd, published by Foksal Gallery

2002

Insideout, Fifth Festival of Contemporary Art, Berlin

Omer Fast: I wanna tell you something (catalog), texts by Tracy L. Adler & Judicaël Lavrador, published by &: gb agency, Paris

Second Sight Alumni Exhibition, published by Hunter College Art Gallery, New York

Biennial 2002 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Videos

Nostalgia

'Nostalgia' is a new three-part film installation by Omer Fast including one film depicting a migrant from a dystopian Britain seeking asylum in Africa. Adapted from a true story, this narrative is presented alongside an extract of original footage and a dramatisation of an encounter between the artist and a person seeking asylum in Britain. Deliberately combining these disparate elements, Omer Fast confronts us with a contemporary recollection of displacement and loss in a film narrative that is set in the future but which appears to have been produced in the past.

In a west African colony increasingly hostile to Britons seeking a better life, an asylum-seeker is interrogated as to the whereabouts of a tunnel used to smuggle people into the colony. He is offered a deal by the authorities and must choose between betraying his friends and securing his future.This story was inspired by a conversation between the artist and a west African national seeking asylum in London.While not a straightforward adaptation of his experiences, the work picks up on one strand from his life story and embeds it in several scenes that repeat in each film.

'Nostalgia' enriches the discourse established in Fast's work over the past decade. Film and video work, often shown as installations on multiple screens, take contemporary issues or historic moments as their points of departure, meshing narrative, documentary and dramatic content. Contrary to first impressions, however, the primary subject matter is revealed to be the process and impact of film-making as a medium for story-telling.

What ordinarily takes place behind the scenes is here brought to the fore, the mechanics of both film-making and story-telling often contradicting one another. In the absence of evidence or witnesses, those seeking asylum must often depend on the content and delivery of their stories to secure their right to stay. Fast addresses the projection of power within an institutional context and our implication in its operations, for example as it seeks to unravel fact from fiction.

Take A Deep Breath

In the summer of 2002, Martin F. was standing outside a falafel shop in Jerusalem when it exploded. A trained medic, he went in and discovered the body of a young man on the floor. The young man had lost both legs below the waist, as well as an arm, but his eyes were open and focused. A few seconds passed while the two looked at each other. Knowing it was probably in vain, Martin F. decided to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

After a minute or two, the young man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he expired. As he walked out, Martin F. saw that a group of people had gathered, including two policemen, who wanted to know how many casualties were inside. When he responded that there was only one, Martin F. realized the young man he had just left inside was a suicide bomber.

In the film, extracts recorded from a conversation with Martin F. in 2008 alternate with fictional scenes in which a team of actors attempts to stage his ordeal for the camera.

There are two cameras shooting simultaneously.

Each shoots a different view.

Omer Fast

Looking Pretty For God (After G.W.)

"Looking Pretty for God was commissioned by Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg for Manifesta 7, and by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Several months before Manifesta, Anselm told me that the working concept for the show was “the soul.” At first, I thought he was joking. When I realized there was a possibility that he was serious, I decided to take on the concept as seriously as I could, accepting it as a personal challenge. I come from a militantly secular family and don’t have the background of religious practice, spiritual beliefs or even a sense of tradition that could help in this matter. Also, unlike triggers for previous projects that were all about discrete historical events, their witnesses and reenactors, I understood the soul to be more of a ‘big’ concept, fluid but nevertheless as historically contingent as abstract concepts can get. And so, lacking a personal angle on the matter, the first step was to find people who could talk about the soul in first-person, who could explain to me what happens when a person dies. I had already talked with several clergymen of small-town churches while producing a project in Virginia in 2005. I did not want to go through those doors again. So while visiting New York for the Whitney Biennial, I lined up meetings with funeral directors in Staten Island, Manhattan and Queens, knowing that the technical nature of their jobs could anchor the conversation and keep it from dipping into territory for which I was ill-prepared. As the professionals responsible for a deceased person’s last public appearance, funeral directors’ line of work falls somewhere between make-up artistry, plastic surgery, sculpture, PR, grief counseling, event planning, and magic. Their profession is also emblematic of modernity’s specialization of production and work, and their segregation from the consuming public. As the funeral directors speak about what they do off-camera, stills fi lmed inside the funeral home are intercut with scenes depicting a commercial photo shoot involving child models. Occasionally, aspects seen in the photo shoot appear to coincide with things the funeral directors describe: the application of make-up, the proper posing of hands and face, achieving an ideal facial expression and an overall finish, the work involved in creating a memorable image. As the camera wanders around the frozen expressions and bodies, the models’ normally passive stance is occasionally interrupted as one suddenly speaks, in complete synch with the voiceover, as if channeling a voice. It’s a gimmick, obviously, but when it works it succeeds in relating two distinct industries involved in creating two very different image products. Also, in as much as a performance can possess or transform the person performing (and of course hopefully the one watching) the child-actor’s sudden break into pantomime briefl y brushes across the spiritual realm, at least as closely as I can imagine at this moment in life."

Omer Fast

Excerpt from an interview with Chen Tamir published in Flash Art #262, October 2008

De Grote Boodschap

Filmed on-location in Mechelen, Belgium, De Grote Boodschap presents the stories of paired Flemish characters who appear to be caught in a time-warp. A stewardess and her unemployed husband, an old junkie and her caregiver, a former beatboxer and his girlfriend, a real-estate agent and a taciturn Arab. As each character attempts to understand what has happened and what is about to take place, the movement of the camera and the motivations of the other characters conspire against him/her. This particular time-warp depicts individuals locked in a conflict with time that ranges from scatological to the profound.

The Casting

The video is edited from conversations I recorded in Texas last year with a young Army sergeant who was waiting to return for his second tour in Iraq. Over several days, he told me two different stories and I chopped them up and braided them together into one. The first story takes place in Bavaria and involves a date with a German girl who's into speed and self-mutilation.

The second story takes place outside Baghdad and involves a road-side bomb and a tragic mistake. These two stories, along with bits and pieces from the rest of the interviews, were edited into a script which was given to a group of actors to interpret in a series of silent tableaux.

As an installation the work tries to deal with its subject matter in terms of pairs: Interviewee and interviewer, memory and the movies, love and death, routine and accident.

Omer Fast

Godville

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.

Spielberg's List

Spielberg’s List is a synchronized video installation presented on two separate screens. This work centers on interviews with residents of Krakow, Poland, who worked as extras in the concentration camp scenes in Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List”. The artist leads the viewer into a meandering mix of his interviewees’ real and imaginary lives. Discussions about the director’s selection of the extras, the scenes of death and humiliation that they enacted and their feelings about the experience create confusions between the film and the actual events, especially when it emerges that some of the extras were camp survivors. The simulacrum is completed by the revelation that the camp built for the movie has become a bigger tourist attraction than the real one in the area (Auschwitz), because it is in better shape.

Spielberg’s List is a synchronized video installation presented on two separate screens. This work centers on interviews with residents of Krakow, Poland, who worked as extras in the concentration camp scenes in Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List”.

The artist leads the viewer into a meandering mix of his interviewees’ real and imaginary lives. Discussions about the director’s selection of the extras, the scenes of death and humiliation that they enacted and their feelings about the experience create confusions between the film and the actual events, especially when it emerges that some of the extras were camp survivors. The simulacrum is completed by the revelation that the camp built for the movie has become a bigger tourist attraction than the real one in the area (Auschwitz), because it is in better shape.

A Tank Translated

A Tank Tranlated compiles footage of conversations with four members of an Israeli Army tank. Each crew member was interviewed separately in his home – a year after being released from the army. Althrough conducted informally – each conversation began with a series of identical questions asking the crew member to definite what a tank is, what his assignment in the tank was, whether he was good at his assignment and why. Some time after answering these questions, the crew member would again be asked to give a definition for what is a tank. This question would be repeated several times troughout each conversation, in addition to a number of similar queries regarding what is an army, a war, an enemy, victory, defeat and so on. The conversations were conducted in hebrew, then edited and translated faithfully with running English subtitles. However – as the subtitles line the bottom of the screen in the video – whenever any word appears which signals a military context – it is quickly altered – onscreeen – into a civilian substitute. The substitutions happen quickly – leaving the direct translation of the conversation onscreen for less than a second – before the selected words are replaced and a new meaning built. Although the sentence structure and spirit of each original dialogue is preserved – the context is systematically and vivibly normalized as the new narratives takes over. And so, as each crew member speaks – his observations regarding his assignment in the tank and his role in the present reality are rebuilt into an imaginary if somewhat banal flight of fancy. Through this very inaccurate translation – the words of the interview subjects – four young men who until recently functioned as instruments of the state –are coaxed back into civilian life.

Berlin-Hura

Berlin-Hura tries to draw together two separate landscapes-two parcels of land- one in the Mitte section of Berlin-the other in the Negev desert of Israel- by unpacking the history that uniquely connects them. In a sequence of views presented on three monitors, the near- stillness of the paired landscapes is routinely interrupted by the motion of humans - by planes, trains, pedestrians, camels and cars- and by a third element: an elderly woman who sits in another space- inside her appartment in Tel Aviv- and describes what’s being seen. Her descriptions arrive in installments. They range from what she remembers about these landscapes and what she knows about them to what she thinks is their future and what their pairing could mean. The narrative that slowly emerges from these descriptions- the history that connects the two landscapes- is a personal story that is coherent but full of contradictions. It is shaped by the motion of humans through land and the forced displacement of people. The imperfections of a narrative and a memory- the small contradictions of the storyteller - the resistance of two parcels of land to permanent building and ownership-become emblematic of a larger paradox that runs through the life of a nation.

CNN Concatenated

CNN Concatenated personalizes the non-stop news narratives by remixing its ingredients – the words spoken by news presenters – into composite monologues. The monologues are drawn from a ten-thousand word database compiled from recording of anchors and commentator who appear on the netork. And while this dictionary could provide the vocabulary for an endless number of thouts and distinct sentences, the speech that results reflects a decidedly presonal – albeit highly impressionable – mode of expression. If there is a speaking subject behind the monologues it is a voice that attempts to fill-in what the news stream falls to relieve and even exploits – more then the need to know and understand, but rather the need to feel and experience. To have a stable context from which to make sense of the information. To have memory. To have community. To have intimacy. To act. To escape. To have silence and rest. To have meaning.

T3-AEON

Glendive Foley

Glendive Foley is a synchronized video installtion presented on two separate monitors. A series of self-produced sound effects are juxtaposed against the broad inventoru of residential façades shot on location in the country’s smallest Television market in Glendive, Montana. One monitor catalogs house after house, blank façade after blank façade, as they might be seen by a particularity patient and thorough flaneur. The other monitor contains a grid of smaller inset frames in which up to six simultaneous recordings can be seen. In each recording an attempt is made to orally reproduce one several sounds typical to the suburbs : birds, cars, dogs, lawnmowers, insects and wind. By recombining this narrow range of facsimiles, a new soundtrack is created that tries to echo the ordered ambience of the suburban experience but which is also compromised by the limits of one throat. The two channels are presented synchronously and simultaneously across from each other.

Texts

Press articles

Click on the underlined parts to download the texts in pdf

Press (selection)

2009

Afterall, english, "From Homer to Omer Fast", text by Elisabeth Lebovici and "Omer Fast : When Images Lie...About the Fictionality of Documents", text by Maria Muhle, March.

Mousse Magazine, english, "Omer Fast : redacting", text by Barbara Casavecchia.

2008

Flash Art, #262, english, "Omer Fast, New Magic Realism", interview by Chen Tamir, October.

UOVO, #17, english, "A Multiple'I'", interview by Joanna Fiduccia, April-June.

Artforum, english, "Attention Span", text by Tom Holert, February.

2007

Texte Zur Kunst, #68, english, "Casting Doubt: On Omer Fast at the Mumok", text by Mark Godfrey, December.

2006

Art US, #13, english,"Omer Fast at gb agency", text by Simon Rees, May-June.

Frieze, english, "Making History", text by Mark Godfrey, March-April.

ArtPress, english / french, "Omer Fast at gb agency", text by Thierry Davila, March.

Les Inrockuptibles, #529, french, "Omer Fast à Paris", text by Claire Moulène, January 18-24.

Libération, french, "Passé Décomposé", text by Elisabeth Lebovici, January 16.

2005

Modern Painters, english, "Omer Fast: Godville, Postmasters", text by Joshua Mack, December.

Bidoun, english, "Omer Fast : Godville", text by Nav Haq, December.

Artforum, english, "Omer Fast, Postmasters", text by Emily Hall, December.

2003

Artforum, english, "Openings : Omer Fast", text by Jennifer Allen, September.

2002

Aden (Le Monde), french, "Omer Fast : Citoyen d'un monde qui cloche", interview by Emmanuelle Lequeux, June 19-25.