Omer Fast
b. 1972, Israel

Omer Fast explores video and television as both medium and subject matter, creating video installations for exhibition spaces as well as developing public art projects that extend into the private space of the home. For his 2-channel video installation “Glendive Foley” (2000), Fast juxtaposes views of houses in Glendive, Montana - the smallest television market in the United States - with multiplying portraits of himself producing a soundtrack for this footage with his mouth and hands. In “T3-AEON” (2000), the artist inserts voiceovers into the 1984 film Terminator, which the museum visitor must take home to view, in a situation directly referring to video rental. The voiceovers disquietingly modify and personalize the experience of violence portrayed in the film. Fast (b. 1972, Israel) lives and works in New York City.   

Omer Fast showed with Akiko Ichigawa at Momenta Art, Brooklyn, in October 2000. His work has been featured in “Death Race 2000,” Thread Waxing Space, New York. He curated “Fido Television,” a group exhibition of video work at Hunter College Art Galelry, New York (2000).   


Glendive Foley synchronizes two channels of video: a series of studio-produced foley-effects are juxtaposed against the broad vocabulary of suburban 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 particularly patient and thorough flaneur. The other monitor contains up to six smaller inset frames in which my efforts to reproduce the sounds of the suburbs are represented. The vocabulary of sounds I emulate is a simple reduction of the suburban soundscape. It is formed entirely from foley effects I produce by whistling, hissing, smacking my lips, clucking my tongue and blowing into the microphone. By recombining this inventory of vocal facsimiles for wind, insects, birds, dogs, lawnmowers and the occasionally passing car, a new suburban soundtrack is created which is the product of one throat. The two channels are presented synchronously and simultaneously across from each other.

T3-AEON began as a public art project that involved the slight alteration of Terminator movies rented from New York area video stores. The alteration was limited only to Terminator tapes and consisted of four voiceovers that were carefully inserted into the soundtrack at four separate points in the movie. In each voiceover, a different member of my family recalls a childhood incident that involved being physically disciplined by a parent, the circumstances of the experience and the way that it felt at the time. The voiceovers were inserted into the movie during short scenes of intense violence, temporarily imprinting the action with a new intimate narrative alternative but otherwise allowing the movie to continue with its plot dynamic intact. As a group of stories smuggled into rented cassettes, the four voiceovers present a hidden family record whose purpose is to communicate its content and survive. In the end though, the material survival of this record in circulation largely depends on how well it interfaces with its host - the Terminator - and on its future relationship with an unknown and unsuspecting audience.  As a special project at P.S.1, T3-AEON is presented exclusively as a take-home video to be viewed at the borrower's home and returned by mail. Much like a video store or a library, your personal information will be taken and a due date for return of tape will be issued. The tapes are to be loaned for free, but viewers are asked to return them promptly for recirculation at P.S.1, so that others may be able to view the work. A pre-stamped envelope will be provided for return by mail. A limited number of tapes are available inside the elevator. Please ask the attendant for yours.   

-- Omer Fast, 2000