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.