OMER FAST, CNN CONCATENATED, 2002

Video, monitor, colour, and sound, 18min, 17sec

“CNN Concatenated 2002 is a single channel colour video lasting approximately eighteen minutes and composed entirely of excerpts from the American television news channel CNN. Displayed on a monitor, the work incorporates footage of news anchors, guest commentators, reporters on location and weather forecasters. The extracts are edited so that each presenter speaks only a single word, but collectively their words form seven monologues of varying lengths that are suggestive of emotive personal conversations rather than conventional news broadcasts. These monologues appear to be directly addressed to the viewer (‘I need your attention. I need to know I’m being listened to’) and often imply a satirical critique of television news (‘You recycle anything older than a day. Anything that carries a history is dangerous’). The montage moves at a rapid pace, but also includes short pauses and intakes of breath by the presenters. At the bottom of the screen CNN’s logo and the changing news headlines flash past. Tate’s copy of CNN Concatenated is the artist’s proof, which was produced alongside an edition of five.

CNN Concatenated was completed in Berlin, where the Israeli American artist Omer Fast moved from New York in September 2001 and where he continues to live and work. To make the video the artist recorded hundreds of hours of CNN footage broadcast during 2001 and 2002, which was then catalogued by a computer according to content to form a database containing ten thousand individual words. Using this database, Fast assembled the presenters’ words into a sequence of monologues, a process referenced in the work’s title, as the word ‘concatenate’ means to link different elements into a chain or series. CNN Concatenated was exhibited as part of Fast’s first solo exhibition, which was held at gb agency in Paris in 2002.” - Tate