Omer Fast Wins Bucksbaum Award

I was excited to see that Omer Fast won the Bucks­baum Award for his piece Pro­duc­tion Stills from the Cast­ing in the cur­rent Whit­ney Bien­nial. The award includes a $100,000 stipend and a solo show at the museum. His video piece explores nar­ra­tive and mem­ory by splic­ing together two dif­fer­ent sto­ries told by an army sergeant in inter­views. One story is about dat­ing a women in Ger­many, and another about being deployed in Iraq. The piece is com­posed of two screens side-by-side with pro­jec­tions on both the front and back. The front shows the inter­viewer and inter­vie­wee, with the back show­ing an enact­ment of the sto­ries being told. The sto­ries are cut together to cre­ate a lin­early dis­ori­ent­ing but emo­tion­ally sequen­tial pro­gres­sion. It was by far my favorite piece in the Bien­nial. I’ll be look­ing for­ward to the solo show of his work.

The other piece that I appre­ci­ated at the Bien­nial also addressed the issue of mem­ory, trauma, and the doc­u­men­tary. Julia Meltzer and David Thorn’s video piece Not a Mat­ter of If, But When is a reflec­tion on dif­fer­ent men­tal­i­ties in the face of soci­etal loss, explored through inti­mate solil­o­quy. While the con­tent clearly ref­er­ences Mid­dle East con­flict, the piece effec­tively walks the line between emo­tional speci­ficity and his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al­ity such that it deeply tapped into my expe­ri­ence in Guatemala with ex-guerrillas.