OZET is an ongoing artistic collaboration that encompasses a variety of live performances, films, music recordings, and a band. Each piece of the project draws on and expands the fictional history of the Collective Sphere OZET.
OZET works have been presented at Incubator Arts Project (at St. Mark’s Church), HERE Arts Center, Silent Barn, Littlefield, The Exponential Festival, Fresh Ground Pepper and other venues across New York City.
OZET began in 2007, when Aaron started writing and performing musical forms inspired by his encounter with J.D. Bernal’s prophetic 1929 scientific treatise The World, The Flesh, and the Devil. These “Bernal Project” pieces also integrated ideas and text by Carl Sagan, Karl Kraus, Mark Kurlansky, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Singer. In the late Summer of 2008, Scott joined Aaron in evolving the project, and together they developed the idea of the Collective Sphere OZET.
In August 2010, Aaron and Scott presented Alberts I-V at HERE. This theatrical-music work, produced with the help of a dozen collaborators, delved into the pre-history of the OZET. From 2012 to 2014 OZET made its home at the Incubator Arts Project. Common Hall Village 20 (January 2012) was an immersive, multimedia, performance featuring the OZET Band and a rotating cast of over twenty performers. Katorga (June, 2014), was a tale of imprisonment and mushroom-hunting in the turgid, waning days of the Fifteenth Generation.
Aaron and Scott have also presented five OZET pieces as part of the Ontological Theater’s Incubator Series, including: Koba / OZET Songbook, a thirty minute murder mystery for saxophone quartet, banjo, guitar, trumpet and actors, and Katorga Retraction Holiday, a continuous, 11 hour-long performance.
Throughout their collaboration, Aaron and Scott have been writing and recording a collection of songs they call the “OZET Songbook”. With Daniel Baker, they appear as OZET Band, a trio exclusively dedicated to performing these songs.
Learn More: http://ozet.us