"Continuity"
Omer Fast
Omer Fast discusses Continuity (2012), a short film that was commissioned for dOCUMENTA (13) and questions the very nature of truth and narrative. Continuity depicts a middle-class married couple and the return of their son from Afghanistan. What begins as a straightforward homecoming story set in a conventional domestic interior is interrupted by uneasy repetition and the appearance of ghostly, surreal apparitions from the warzone.
“With more and more questions, you create a productive kind of confusion and that’s what I’m after,” says Fast. As the family’s increasingly choreographed reunion unfolds, a sense of longing and emptiness pervades. Fast adds, “It’s about figuring out what to put along the way to pull you away from this notion that there is a linear story with a goal at the end.”
Featured artists
About the artists
Omer Fast’s multichannel video installations blur the boundaries between documentary, dramatization, and fantasy, frequently generating viewers’ confusion. Fast often anchors his narratives with a conversation between two people—whether subjects recounting their own stories or actors playing roles of interviewer and interviewee. As dialogues escalate in tension, portraits of carefully calibrated identity emerge. Through repetition and reenactment, multiple takes of given scenes build shades of interpretation as a story is told, retold, and mythologized.
