Omer Fast. 5000 Feet Is the Best

Omer Fast’s film 5000 Feet Is the Best, which created a sensation at the 2011 Venice Biennale, is currently on view for the first time since entering the DMA’s contemporary art collection late last year. The video will be on view during Dallas VideoFest 25, September 27–30, at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Born in Jerusalem and based in Berlin, Fast is among the most compelling and sophisticated video artists of his generation. He works with film, video, and television footage to examine how individuals and histories interact with each other in narrative. Fast mixes sound and image into stories that include personal and media accounts of current events and history.

5000 Feet Is the Best, a thirty-minute video, takes its name from an excerpt of an interview between Fast and a Predator Drone aerial vehicle operator now working in Las Vegas as a casino security guard. The video is based on two meetings, recorded in a hotel in Las Vegas in September 2010, where the drone operator shared the technical aspects of his job with Fast as well as the psychological difficulties he has experienced as a result of incidents in which the unmanned plane fired at both militants and civilians.

This fictional and factual retelling of this veteran’s story explores the shifting divisions between reality and representation, and truth and memory. Fast’s articulation of the intersection of video game culture, slick Hollywood narrative, government concealment, and the privatization of warfare provides an elliptical and haunting account of its cost, while refusing to moralize or judge.

Omer Fast: 5000 Feet Is the Best is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Support is provided by the Contemporary Art Initiative through the gifts of an anonymous donor, Arlene and John Dayton, Jennifer and John Eagle, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, Tim Hanley, Marguerite Steed Hoffman, The Karpidas Foundation, Janelle and Alden Pinnell, Allen and Kelli Questrom, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Deedie and Rusty Rose, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and Sharon and Michael Young.

Omer Fast
5000 Feet Is the Best