Bob Ostertag -- Creative Life: Music, Politics, People, and Machines

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009, 7:30 PM
620 DODGE HALL, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MORNINGSIDE CAMPUS
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Creative Life: Music, Politics, People, and Machines

Bob Ostertag, University of California, Davis

Bob Ostertag will read and discuss issues from his new book, Creative Life: Music, Politics, People, and Machines (University of Illnois Press, 2009). In this dazzling set of writings from a musical artist who has worked on the cutting edge of new music for thirty years, Professor Ostertag explores the common ground and points of friction among music, creativity, politics, culture, and technology. In terrain ranging from the guerrilla underground in El Salvador's civil war to the drag queen underground in San Francisco and New York, these essays combine journalism and autobiography to explore fundamental questions of what art is and what role it can occupy in a violent and fragmented world, a world in which daily events compromise the universality toward which art strives. Drawing on his intimate engagement with political conflict in Latin America and the Balkans, Ostertag identifies an art of "insurgent politics" that struggles to expand the parameters of the physical and! social world.

Composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist, kayak instructor--Bob Ostertag's work cannot easily be summarized or pigeon-holed. He has published 21 CDs of music, two movies, two DVDs, and two books. His writings on contemporary politics have been published on every continent and in many languages. Electronic instruments of his design are at the cutting edge of both music and video performance technology. He has performed at music, film, and multi-media festivals around the globe, and his radically diverse collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Anthony Braxton, Lynn Breedlove, Justin Bond, and Pierre Hébert. He is currently Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at the University of California at Davis.

Professor Ostertag will sign copies of his new book following the lecture and discussion.

"Ostertag tells stories from his own experience as an artist and political activist. He searches for the connections and differences in the illumination sought by the artist and the insight sought by the activist, and he explores the quest for transcendence and universality that unites art and politics and also helps explain their divergence. There are no answers here, but rather a brilliant contemplation of the discontent and yearning that motivates our better natures." -- Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America

Thursday, September 17, 2009, 7:30 pm
620 Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus
Free and open to the public