Omer Fast: Talking is not always the solution

“I am interested in creating my own little world and losing myself in it.”
Omer Fast.

Omer Fast (* 1972) is one of the most distinctive film and video artists of his generation. He creates narrations in his films that question the borders between one’s own and media narratives and between current and historic events. His works address the friction between documentary and fiction. The Martin-Gropius-Bau is showing seven of his projects at his first large solo exhibition in Berlin.
Shown will be: “CNN Concatenated” from 2002, “Looking Pretty for God (after G.W.)” from 2008, “5000 Feet is the Best” from 2011, “Continuity” from 2012, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” from 2013, and “Spring” from 2016 as well as a work called “August” from 2016. This film focuses on the renowned Cologne photographer August Sander (1876-1964). This new work shot in 3D is based on the life and work of Sanders. In surreal dream sequences, the artist is haunted at the end of life by the death of his son and the figures he photographed. These seven videos are connected through three constructed waiting rooms resembling those at the doctor, the airport or an official office. The artist created them for the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

In his filmic works, Fast tells stories of trauma, war, religion and relationships. It is always edited material. But nothing can be trusted: No character, no narrator, not even the most authentic seeming images. Everything is constructed. Everything that we know we believe could be entirely different. In his works, Fast, who was raised in Israel and the United States and has been living in Berlin since 2001, questions the conventions of storytelling. Omer Fast’s films are more than thought experiments or games between narration and enactment. They are simultaneously oppressive and moving.

This exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau is held as part of the programme “Immersion. Analogue Arts in the Digital Age”.

“Immersion” is a new programme of the Berliner Festspiele scheduled for three years. It regularly displays works of art which one does not face from the opposite side, but enters to become part of them – as a performance or sculpture, choreography, narrative space or virtual reality experience.