Omer Fast's video installation Glendive Foley utilizes images of the artists pilgrimage to the "country's smallest television market", and self-produced sound effects to create a primal, suburban dialogue. As a child growing up in Israel, Fast's ideas of America and his understanding of the English language were formed through American export television. Once he actually moved to the United States his fantasies of the American lifestyle were met with images of suburbia.  
   

 

In this two-channel video piece the artist examines a small town in Montana. Fast meticulously fuses still images of suburban housing with audio reproduced by the artist and aligned with the action to create a new composite. The artist emulates a vocabulary of suburban sounds - wind, insects, birds, dogs, lawnmowers, and the occasional passing car. This convergence of two fields of simulation dispenses with the discursive aspect of language to create something more primitive. The slippage that occurs between individual speech and collective jargon, when speech becomes vernacular, is critical to an understanding of Fast's work. The result is a highly convincing visual/audio experience that is painstakingly created by the artist.

 
   
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