BABYLON, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, big cinema hall
(Eintritt frei | admission free)
Together with Omer Fast »Videoart at Midnight« will show as a Berlin first release 5000 FEET IS THE BEST which was premiered at the 54. Venice Biennale. Further we will show some additional material:
5000 FEET IS THE BEST, 2011, 27:00 min
5000 FEET IS THE BEST tells a story about pilots of unmanned, American drones who work in container-like offices surrounded by a multitude of computer displays. Technology allows them to discern what make someone’s shoes are or to watch a man smoking his cigarette from the other end of the world – it is a very intimate visual perception, a sensation the pilot also feels when he directs the drone’s missiles to their target. The digital film, which is based on an interview by the artist with a former pilot, mixes documentary material with fictitious elements. The pilot evades the questions of the interviewer time and again and seeks refuge in the recounting of petty anecdotes. The images these stories conjure up in the film blend with our own imaginings of the war in the Middle East and those of Las Vegas. Increasingly, the film focuses on the void between our own media-shaped assumptions and the traumatizing experiences of the pilot.
