Omer Fast
Omer Fast is considered as one of the most innovative video-artists working today. Through various strategies of digital manipulation, his work draws attention to the fine line between documentary and fiction, memory, perception, and history as reflected in the present moment in time.
There is a countdown, a slate is clapped and then we hear the following: “That morning I took off from work for an hour or so. I went with my wife on a few chores. When I came back I decided to go for lunch. I headed for my favourite Falafel place on Prophets Street. Within fifteen seconds I heard this boom. Not as noisy as you’d really expect. And I saw smoke emerging from the Falafel place. The plate glass window was all shattered. There’s complete silence. Maybe a few car alarms go off. There’s glass on the sidewalk. And the first thing that really hits me is a human arm by the door.”
The voice belongs to Martin F, a trained medic in Jerusalem who in 2002 found himself in the aftermath of a bombing. He describes how he entered the wreckage of the shop and discovered the body of a young man who had lost both legs and an arm to the explosion. Acknowledging in retrospect that it was irrational, Martin F nevertheless administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The man died in his arms. Leaving the shop moments later Martin spoke to two police offers waiting outside. During their conversation he realised that the body inside was that of a suicide bomber.
In Omer Fast’s video installation Take a Deep Breath, Martin’s story is portrayed in two films, projected simultaneously across two staggered screens. Mixing several languages, genres and techniques of cinema – fiction, melodrama, documentary, slapstick, still and moving image – Fast unravels the intricate and murky processes through which historical facts are established and recorded. So much of the formation of contemporary history takes place and is solidified through word and image in the media. As Take a Deep Breath makes explicit via its narrator, this is typically caught up within the inherently mediated interaction between an event and an individual, even before subjection to editorial licence.
The voice belongs to Martin F, a trained medic in Jerusalem who in 2002 found himself in the aftermath of a bombing. He describes how he entered the wreckage of the shop and discovered the body of a young man who had lost both legs and an arm to the explosion. Acknowledging in retrospect that it was irrational, Martin F nevertheless administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The man died in his arms. Leaving the shop moments later Martin spoke to two police offers waiting outside. During their conversation he realised that the body inside was that of a suicide bomber.
In Omer Fast’s video installation Take a Deep Breath, Martin’s story is portrayed in two films, projected simultaneously across two staggered screens. Mixing several languages, genres and techniques of cinema – fiction, melodrama, documentary, slapstick, still and moving image – Fast unravels the intricate and murky processes through which historical facts are established and recorded. So much of the formation of contemporary history takes place and is solidified through word and image in the media. As Take a Deep Breath makes explicit via its narrator, this is typically caught up within the inherently mediated interaction between an event and an individual, even before subjection to editorial licence.
