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[ bob ostertag ]
World Premiere of
Yugoslavia Suite Composer Ostertag's Yugoslavia Suite premieres at RAW By Steve Starger Published 09/16/99 Hartford Advocate American composer Bob Ostertag performs about 90 percent of his experimental works in Europe, so he wasn't surprised to be invited to participate in a music festival in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia. The invitation came a few years ago from radio station B-92, the festival's organizers. The Balkan station also happens to be the center of opposition to Serbian strongman and ethnic cleanser Slobodan Milosevic, Ostertag says on the phone from San Francisco. Ostertag and his crew have been trying to get to the Balkans for some time, but the region's bloody civil wars have made the trip impossible. Ostertag had to cancel a trip last year because of the U.S. bombings of Kosovo. "It's pretty hard to do much without electricity," Ostertag remarks. Finally, Ostertag has a commitment to tour the Balkans beginning on Oct. 10. Stops include Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and tentative dates in Macedonia and Croatia, along with performances in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Before that, Ostertag will premiere his new piece, Yugoslavia Suite, at Real Art Ways. The title of the new work and RAW's involvement are not accidental. Ostertag, who has performed at RAW in the past, got a commission from the Hartford-based arts complex, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, to create a new work for video and sound. Coupling that with his ongoing efforts to get to the Balkans, Ostertag came up with Yugoslavia Suite. "It's still a work in progress," Ostertag says. "It's probably the biggest project I've ever undertaken. I've had to invent instruments to use in the piece." Yugoslavia Suite consists of three sections. The first movement, "War Games," features projected images of a flight simulator computer game mixed with actual films of the war in Kosovo and video games that the Army and Air Force use to train pilots and tank gunners. While the images are projected, Ostertag plays the flight simulator game on stage. The game's joy stick has been wired to cut in the other footage, which includes shots taken inside planes, "what people see when they're dropping bombs," Ostertag says. "It all looks the same; it's all a game." For the second movement, "These Hands," Ostertag appears on a blackened stage with only his hands lit. He creates a "hand opera" synchronized to images of movements and speech by key players in the former Yugoslavia's ethnic cleansing bloodbaths. The third movement of "Yugoslavia Suite" will be created at the end of the RAW performance, as audience members are invited to stand in front of a camera and comment on the war in Kosovo. The clips will be incorporated into the piece that Ostertag takes to the Balkans. Ostertag created Yugoslavia Suite in collaboration with cinematographer Bill Turnley and software designer Tom Demeyer of the STEIM studio in Amsterdam. Despite the work's overt political themes and Ostertag's reputation for creating works charged with political and social subtexts, Ostertag maintains that Yugoslavia Suite is not a political tract. "I've done quite a few political pieces, but I prefer not to think of my pieces as political," he says. "When I think of political art, I think of people who say, now I'm going to make a piece that's going to convey the following message, or about winning people over to my side. I find that I'm never interested in that part. I don't think art is about trying to convince people of something or conveying a message. "In these pieces," Ostertag continues, "I try to take a slice of reality and use art to blow it up big and wrap people up in it. That's what art is good for--helping people to reflect in ways they're not accustomed to. If you're successful in capturing a moment, it's going to have a political access, because the world you live in has politics, but it has other realities, too." Ostertag has literally separated art and politics in his own life. The 42-year-old composer left music in the late 1970s, when he was becoming entrenched in the downtown new music scene In a time "when it was extremely unfashionable in American art to have a political content, I was the only one in the downtown scene doing that," Ostertag says. "It was like farting at a dinner party." Ostertag was running a small record label with guitarist Fred Frith when the Somosa regime fell in Nicaragua. He traveled to Nicaragua to record the country's music for the label but got so involved in the political situation there that the record never got made. Ostertag also dropped out of music at that point for 10 years, traveling to El Salvador to do political organizing. "As a result of that experience, I think political organizing and making art are very different things," Ostertag says. "So, if my piece moves somebody, fine, but that's not my main objective. Real political organizing has to do with putting together coalitions of people who move in the same direction on big political issues. Art in a way moves in the exact opposite direction, being as true as possible to your own idiosyncratic self." Ostertag has no idea how audiences in the Balkans will react to Yugoslavia Suite. "You just have to be honest and do the best job you can," he says. "If what the project is about is having an honest dialogue, then let's do it." |