West Australian electronic producer Pogo, best known for his stunning pop culture video mash-ups on YouTube (under the account Fagotron), is calling for assistance from the public after being slammed with a decade-long ban from entering America after a mix-up with his agency, as the Herald Sun reports.
The man behind Pogo, 24-year-old Nick Bertke, was arrested in the United States for touring without a working visa back in September 2011. He then spent two weeks in a county jail before spending another week incarcerated in a federal detention centre. The following month, officials issued a decade long band on Bertke from entering the country – which obviously diminishes a huge market potential for the emerging musician’s career.
“America is really the last place on earth I want to be banned from,” says Bertke, who has launched an online video pleading for assistance in overcoming the US ban. “I have close friends in America, I have unique work opportunities there and I’ve been speaking with lawyers and consulates who are telling me the odds are very heavily against me,” explains Pogo in the video (hosted by Herald Sun and embedded at the bottom). “America is really the last place on earth I want to be banned from.” – Nick Bertke aka Pogo
Worst of all, Bertke claims that the American ban is a result of his promoters The Agency Group failing to advise him about the necessary visa requirements. A 2011 blog post from Bertke claims that his incarceration came “courtesy of The Agency Group and their failure to provide me with the correct travel documents for my September tour in 2011,” as Exclaim.ca reported.
“The moment they heard the news, they removed me from their list of clients and never communicated with me again,” he adds. Bertke, who had previously travelled to tour the US on a visa waiver, says that “this was news to me… I’ve played shows in the States, I’ve given talks …. And I’ve done all of this on a visa waiver.”
The 24-year-old has over 22 million views and more than 230,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel for his unique visual mash-ups, constructed from pulling apart film fragments from the likes of old Disney movies, Pixar flicks like Up, and popular film and TV shows like the Will Smith-starring Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
“It’s been my passion since I was about 16 to take small bits of voice, chords, musical sequences, sound effects from my favourite films and piece these sounds together to create completely new music that hopefully captures the essence of that film,” explains Pogo.
While Bertke is fighting the 10-year US ban, he’s continuing with his crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter called Pogo Presents World Remix. “The goal of my project is to travel the world capturing sights, sounds, voices and chords, and use them to compose and shoot a track and video for each major culture of the world,” says the producer.
Following on from visual tracks he’s already created of Kenya and the Indian Pacific, Pogo’s next World Remix project is Tibet, which gained $25,299 – over $10k more than its projected target of $15,000 – from more than 1,000 pledgers.
“I see the potential here to travel the world in search of sights and sounds of our cultures, religions, people and their passions, their lifestyles and piece those sounds together to create tracks and videos that capture the human spirit,” says Bertke.
