Critical Writing Index

Five Thousand Feet is the Best:: Omer Fast Interviewed by Eyal Weizman

by Eyal Weizman

Photoworks, Oct. Fall 2012, pp. 62-67

An interview with Omer Fast, who discusses his celebrated work, Five Thousand Feet is the Best, a video about a drone operator who kills from a distance, half a world away, as an unmanned plane is activated to fire at civilians from a height of five thousand feet. Fast addresses the media spaces of war and the unnamed psychological disorder associated with virtual killing. For the drone operator, the experience of combat reality is hyper-real, but paradoxically, the senses are being deprived, as the killing is being carried out in silence and this has lasting psychological ramifications.

Additionally, Fast suggests that "the most violent thing a drone does is impose a camera and a perspective on people who are either unaware of its presence or who are actively resisting it."

ITEM 2012.087 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Five Thousand Feet is the BestOmer Fast