Tora Bora is a reverse engineered
opera. The Seventeenth Century etcher Jacques Callot’s illustrations of scenes from operas inspired
the thought—what if all that remained of an opera were etchings
from a few scenes? How, for example, would the Magic Flute be reconstructed
from that? With this in mind Art Hazelwood and Klaus-Ullrich Rötzscher
began this collaboration.
Art Hazelwood engraved
the six scenes from the opera Tora Bora. Tora Bora is the name of
a mountain cave complex at the center of
Afghan
contemporary history. The CIA funded the expansion of the caves
there to help the Mujahideen fight the Soviets. The Taliban used
them, and
it was Osama Bin Laden’s last known address, from where he
escaped capture by the US. Even now poppy production and Taliban
activity is
rampant in this rugged mountain area twenty miles from the Pakistan
border.
The opera is presented in a fold out stage with screen printed covers.
The viewer moves through the various scenes of the opera while reading
the storyline and lyrics in an accompanying booklet and using
seven puppets to enact the scenes. Should a full scale opera appear
it will
be staged on a larger stage.
This fold out boxed opera with seven puppets, six engravings and a letterpress booklet of storyline, in an edition of twenty is $2,500.
Art Hazelwood has created a wide
range of book arts projects from large scale to intimate, from literary to
political. His prints and books are in many collections including the Whitney
Museum of American Art, The Library of Congress, Arts of the Book Collection,
Yale University Library, Stanford Special Collections, and the Center for the
Study of political Graphics.
Klaus-Ullrich
Rötzscher is
owner of Pettingell Book Bindery in Berkeley. He has created book
projects with Jacob Samuel Editions, Lapis Press and Eastside Editions,
making books for artists including Sam Francis, Rebecca Horn, Anish
Kapoor, Richard Long and Ed Ruscha, among others.
