Find out more about the Artes Mundi 6 shortlisted artists and their practice in these short 'in conversation' films created with Marc Price at NoWhere Fast TV. A special thank you to all the artists.
'Omer Fast creates layered film installations that examine modes of storytelling and reconstruct the past. Taking key historic and contemporary events as his subject matter he explores the ways in which a memory is recounted, narratives are retold and events represented. His dramatized films, characterised by high production values, manipulate recorded image and speech and employ the discrepancy between the two as a space to blur the distinction between reality and representation, truth and fiction.
Composed of footage Fast recorded while interviewing US soldiers freshly returned from Iraq, The Casting examines the relationship between images and storytelling to pose the question: ‘where do we seek truth?’ Doubt is immediately cast over any claim one might make of the work. Its war images (it is worth noting that not once is Iraq mentioned in the script) is in reality shot with an American cast in the Mojave desert, while, at the onset of the interview, Fast begins by asking: ‘so how do you feel about improvising?’ The artist embeds the interview within a context similar to a screen test, encouraging us to question whether what we hear is a true or fictional. We are forced to ask: ‘are these real or made up memories?’, as we are confronted by performative and creative modes of retelling the past.
Fast’s work has often dealt with the fallacies of language, in particular the disjunction between image and text, intentions and utterances, and the ambiguities of communication and storytelling. In Her Face Was Covered (Part I) and (Part II), the transcript is rendered as a series of text slides, interwoven with images found through Google searches generated by typing in a single line from the script and selecting one of the resulting images. The randomness of this kind of logic builds a picture of the treacherous nature of language and its vast and unruly potential.' http://www.artesmundi.org/artists/omer-fast
Omer Fast Five Thousand Feet is the Best Digital Film, 30 minutes, 2011 The film is based on two meetings with a Predator drone sensor operator, which were recorded in a hotel in Las Vegas in September 2010. On camera, the drone operator agreed to discuss the technical aspects of his job and his daily routine. Off camera and off the record, he briefly described recurring incidents in which the unmanned plane fired at both militants and civilians - and the psychological difficulties he experienced as a result. Instead of looking for the appropriate news accounts or documentary footage to augment his redacted story, the film is deliberately miscast and misplaced: It follows an actor cast as the drone operator who grudgingly sits for an interview in a dark hotel. The interview is repeatedly interrupted by the actor\'s digressions, which take the viewer on meandering trips around Las Vegas. Told in quick flashbacks, the stories form a circular plot that nevertheless returns fitfully to the voice and blurred face of the drone operator - and to his unfinished story.
Video extraido do Youtube - CC
A live performance over three separate evenings. The act began with one person recalling a personal memory and then delivered the narrative to the audience. As the story was being told, an actor alongside the stage is also listening. Once the narrator is done, the actor begins to re-tell the story which was just told with as much accuracy as possible. This process continues throughout the evening, allowing the story to slowly transform, in a similar way to the childhood game "telephone". A Performa Commission co-produced by Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund with support by the Edith Russ Haus for Media Arts, Oldenburg, and the Goethe Institute, Hong Kong.