Omer Fast is a contemporary video artist. He received his BFA from Tufts University

Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...

, School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1995 and an MFA from Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

 in 2000. Fast uses his films to explore the various possibilities offered by cinematic medium. His piece The Casting (2007), produced by Commonwealth Projects, was featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial

Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...

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The Casting

The viewer walks into the screening room of the The Casting initially encountering two hanging projection screens. Each screen contains a different depiction of a narrative showing the characters acting while silent and remaining completely still. The projection screens are double sided and contain two additional images on the rear side where the viewer sees two men engaged in an interview. The two men are a young American Army sergeant and the artist in a dialog about the narrative. The artist states during the interview that he is interested only in memory and how memory gets mediated; he says the work he is trying to achieve has or should have no political slant. Although the work is politically ambiguous it shows the powerlessness of an American Army sergeant in the current Iraqi conflict and possibly the powerlessness of perceived American hegemonic power.

CNN Concatenated

In 2002, Fast released CNN Concatenated, an 18-minute long single-channel video which uses CNN footage. The video is cut so that each word is spoken by a different newsperson. The pieces literally asks the viewers questions about media authenticity and give CNN a distinct voice.

Nostalgia

In October 2009, Fast’s exhibition "Nostalgia" opened at South London Gallery. The exhibition included Nostalgia, a three-part film installation that intermingles a man’s account of his struggle for asylum in Britain with a reenactment of his story as a 1970s science fiction movie in which he attempts to flee a dystopian Europe and relocate to a colony in Africa.

External links

• Hunter College Art Department
• Bucksbaum Award
• Whitney Biennial
• Tufts University Alumni
• Postmasters Gallery