(De)Constructed Memory: The Transformation of Subjective Experience in the Film and Video Art of Omer Fast and Kerry Tribe

Abstract

Memory is undeniably subjective. In fact, as Astrid Mania has noted, retention and recollection of experiences are among the most unreliable and unpredictable of cerebral functions, and our ability to accurately recall events is affected by neurological, psychological and cultural factors.' Yet our desire to resist the inevitable and preserve the integrity of our memories guarding our experiences and discounting revisions and editions-is so ingrained that rather than accept the malleability of our memories, we unconsciously forget, invent, and edit, resulting in loss (or gain) of detail, re-contextualization of experience, and re-shuffling and re-combination of fragmented words, images, and knowledge In the work of two contemporary video artists, Omer Fast and Kerry Tribe, three manifestations of this process are exposed and deconstructed, demonstrating several ways we unconsciously access the past and construct coherent representation from incongruent or even incompatible fragments. Specifically, to organize and rationalize memories we piece together available information; to broaden the appeal and significance of our memories we recontextualize our experience in imagined space or time; and to clarify and confirm foggy or undocumented memories, we intersubjectively correlate verbal, visual, and mental clues. In turn, upon finding that both external cues and internal gauges arc in fact subjective, malleable, and unreliable, we may acknowledge the difficulty of collating memory with reality and venture beyond harmonized and structured illusion toward more collective interpretation of the past. In Fast's video installation (2007) interviews based on personal experience arc- reconstructed so that each successive retelling or invented sequence of imagery distances itself from the original source (an American soldier's recollection of two unrelated and traumatic experiences in Germany and Iraq). Although core elements or details are retained for the sake of recognition, memories transition from private to public, prompting peripheral change. According to Fast, this process is analogous to piece of fruit, which starts with a hard, indigestible heart surrounded by perishable good stuff, and seed that if swallowed comes out the other end pretty much the way it started.- Applied to identity, this theory illuminates the multiple roles that constitute subjectivity. To install Casting, Fast projected two two-channel films back-to-back onto suspended screens, forcing viewers to choose between front and back perspective. In The Casting (Back), set in an anonymous production studio, an actor playing Fast interviews another actor impersonating an unidentified United States Army sergeant. In The Casting (Front), the same interview is voiced over series of what appear to be film stills, but are actually tableaux vivant images that restagc the sergeant's memories of domestic scenes in southern Germany and highway checkpoints in Iraq. Viewers encountering The Casting (Rack) for the first time might assume that they are watching an exchange between the artist and real soldier. Specifically, the brunette actor, playing Fast, looks vaguely familiar, brooding, and scruffily dressed (as stereotypical artist might, be), while the all-American type, cast as soldier, appears self-assured, aggressive, and physically strong. Further enhancing such credibility, the soldier's tone is sincere, so that even in 'The. Casting (Front), his disembodied voice is convincing. In this sense, our trust in the soldier is not determined by the believability of his story, but is instead related to our media-based notions of authenticity and character, physically or visibly expressed through gesticulations and/or facial expressions. In other words, analogous to the experience of watching reality television, Fast collapses the so-called back and front regions of his work so viewers are exposed to and then denied access to secret world, making that which is hidden all the more seductive. …