Detail of CNN Concatenated (2002). Production still from the series ART21 Exclusive. © ART21, Inc. 2015. Artwork courtesy: Omer Fast, Arratia Beer, Dvir Gallery & gb agency
“What have we done to deserve this? What could we have done to prevent it from happening? What can we learn?” — CNN Concatenated (2002)
Today’s ART21 Exclusive features Omer Fast discussing CNN Concatenated (2002), an 18-minute monologue he composed from CNN footage acquired around September 11, 2001. Fast began assembling simple sentences from broadcasts before the terrorist attacks, but soon realized his piece would need to shift focus once they occurred. “Through that footage, the challenge was to articulate a voice,” he says. Omer considers the artwork’s voice, which he describes as “urgent, demanding, aggressive and scared,” as his doppelgänger. In response to the time during which it was made, CNN Concatenated asks questions like “Where do we go from here? What do we know? How have we changed?”
CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: David Howe. Editor: Morgan Riles. Camera: Claus Deubel. Sound: Oliver Lumpe. Artwork Courtesy: Omer Fast, Arratia Beer, Dvir Gallery & gb agency.
ART21 Exclusive is supported, in part, by 21c Museum Hotel, and by individual contributors.