'The Casting', Omer Fast
The Casting is a four channel video installation based on conversations the artist recorded in 2007 with a young US Army sergeant before his second deployment in Iraq.
"Over several days -remarks Fast, the sergeant told me two different stories and I chopped them and braided them together into one. The first story takes place in Bavaria
and involves a date with a German girl who’s into speed and self-mutilation. The second story takes place outside Baghdad and involves a roadside bomb and a tragic mistake.
These two stories were edited into a script, which was given to a group of actors to interpret in a series of silent tableaux. As an installation the work deals with its subject matter
in terms of pairs: interviewee and interviewer; memory and the movies, love and death, routine and accident."
This book not only compiles a script to the movie but also additional interviews carried out with soldiers by the artist Omer Fast.
Published and available at MUMOK, Vienna and Walther König, Köln ISBN 978-3-86560-403-3