Omer Fast is a storyteller. The stories that he tells, however, are of a very particular nature: they consist of dark, hidden confessions, emotional digressions, and vivid imaginations. He shares – and creates – other peoples’ secrets that are as real as they are invented, as tangible as they are perplexing, and certainly, always, captivatingly absurd.

5,000 feet is the best is a story that takes the viewers from Las Vegas to the Middle East, from the descriptive day to day account of an American Predator drone pilot to a Hollywood-esque imagined interview between an actor and the artist/interviewer himself, and further, to scenes from the actor’s memory.  These scenes are then acted out subjectively from the artist/interviewer’s perspective as well as the actor’s.  It tells the tale of personal, social and political trauma in a multi-layered and thoroughly adept style, purposefully leaving the viewer feeling displaced, confused and apprehensive.

In the context of DHC/ART’s upcoming exhibition, Chronicles of a Disappearance, Fast’s work certainly presents a chronicle of the disappeared.  But who, or what, has disappeared?  In perfect cohesion with Fast’s fine ability to present an endless number of sides to the same coin, the answer is in no way straightforward.  The disappeared include the drone pilot, as he hides behind computer screens and red buttons in his Las Vegas office; the militants and civilians in the Middle East, who are obliterated by a strange light hurling towards them from the sky; the memories of the actor, as they are transformed into different realities by the artist/interviewer who is witness only to a verbal description, from which he must come to his own conclusions.  Fact and fiction, time, memory and place all disappear, as they are morphed and molded together. In their new form, they create an incongruous and consistently inconsistent story.  It is as if the plot itself has disappeared, and the viewers are left to piece the story back together themselves.

Amanda Beattie
DHC/ART Education

This text reflects the point of view of the author and not that of DHC/ART.