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by Yoko Ono
Climb up a ladder. Look at the painting on the ceiling with a magnifying glass, and find the word ‘YES’
The interactive object known as Ceiling Painting was an important work shown at Ono's historic 1966 Indica Gallery show in London. The viewer is invited to climb a white ladder, where, at the top, a magnifying glass, attached by a chain, hangs from a frame on the ceiling. The viewer uses the reading glass to discover a block letter "instruction" beneath the framed sheet of glass-it says "YES." It was through this work that Ono met her future husband and longtime collaborator, John Lennon.
Q: How did you meet Yoko?
John Lennon: There was a sort of underground clique in London; John Dunbar, who was married to Marianne Faithfull, had an art gallery in London called Indica, and I'd been going around to galleries a bit on me off days in between records, also to a few exhibitions in different galleries that showed sort of unknown artists or underground artists.
I got the word that this amazing woman was putting on a show the next week, something about people in bags, in black bags, and it was going to be a bit of a happening and all that. So I went to a preview the night before it opened. I went in - she didn't know who I was or anything - and I was wandering around. There were a couple of artsy-type students who had been helping, lying around there in the gallery, and I was looking at it and was astounded. There was an apple on sale there for two hundred quid; I thought it was fantastic - I got the humor in her work immediately. I didn't have to have much knowledge about avant-garde or underground art, the humor got me straightaway. It was two hundred quid to watch the fresh apple decompose.
But it was another piece that really decided me for or against the artist: a ladder that led to a painting, which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. I climbed the ladder, looked through the spyglass, and in tiny little letters it said, YES.
So it was positive. I felt relieved. It's a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn't say NO or FUCK YOU or something.
I was very impressed. John Dunbar introduced us - neither of us knew who the hell each other was. She didn't know who I was; she'd only heard of Ringo; I think it means apple in Japanese. And Dunbar had sort of been hustling her, saying, "That's a good patron; you must go and talk to him or do something." Dunbar insisted she say hello to the millionaire - you know what I mean. And she came up and handed me a card that said BREATHE on it - one of her instructions - so I just went [pants]. This was our meeting.
The second time I met her was at a gallery opening of Claes Oldenburg in London. We were very shy; we sort of nodded at each other - she was standing behind me. I sort of looked away because I'm very shy with people, especially chicks. We just sort of smiled and stood frozen together in this cocktail-party thing.
The next thing was, she came to me to get some backing - like all the bastard underground do - for a show she was going. She gave me her Grapefruit book. I used to read it, and sometimes I'd get very annoyed by it; it would say thing like "paint until you drop dead" or "bleed." Then sometimes I'd be very enlightened by it. I went through all the changes that people go through with her work - sometimes I'd have it by the bed and I'd open it and it would say something nice and it would be all right, and then it would say something heavy and I wouldn't like it.
So I gave her the money to back her show. For this whole thing, everything was in half: There was half a bed, half a room, half of everything, all beautifully cut in half and all painted white. And I said to her, "Why don't you sell the other half in bottles?" having caught on by then to what the game was. And she did that - this is still before we'd had any nuptials - and we still have the bottles from the show; it's my first. It was presented as "Yoko Plus Me" - that was our first public appearance. I didn't even go to see the show; I was too uptight.
Q: When did you realize that you were in love with her?
JL: It was beginning to happen; I would start looking at her book, but I wasn't quite aware what was happening to me. Then she did a thing called Dance Event, where different cards kept coming through the door every day saying BREATHE and DANCE and WATCH ALL THE LIGHTS UNTIL DAWN, and they upset me or made me happy, depending.
I'd get very upset about it being intellectual or all fucking avant-garde, then I'd like it, and then I wouldn't. Then I went to India with the Maharoonie and we corresponded. The letters were still formal, but they just had a little side to them. I nearly took her to India, but I still wasn't sure for what reason; I was still sort of kidding myself, with sort of artistic reasons and all that.
When we got back from India, we were talking to each other on the phone. I called her over; it was the middle of the night and Cynthia [Lennon's first wife] was away, and I thought, well, now's the time if I'm gonna get to know her any more. She came to the house and I didn't know what to do, so we went upstairs to my studio and I played her all the tapes that I'd made, all this far-out stuff, some comedy stuff, and some electronic music. She was suitably impressed, and then she said, "Well, let's make one ourselves." So we made Two Virgins. It was midnight when we started; it was dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful.
From 'Lennon Remembers'
(Jann Wenner editor of Rolling Stone magazine interviewing John Lennon in December 1970)
Originally released in England Nov. 1968, in the U.S. in June 1969 on Zapple Records. Recorded at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London and live at Cambridge University, in November 1968 and March 1969
(for English scroll down)
Eröffnung: 10. September 2010, 18:00 - 21:00 Uhr, Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (10. September - 13. November 2010)
Haunch of Venison präsentiert Yoko Ono mit der grundlegend neuen Installation ‚Das Gift‘ vom 10. September bis zum 13. November 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono gilt als Pionierin der Konzeptkunst. ‚Das Gift‘ besteht aus Filmen, Tonaufnahmen, Skulpturen und partizipativen Elementen und wurde eigens für die Ausstellung bei ‚Haunch of Venison‘ konzipiert.
Ono begann in den 1950er Jahren sich mit Konzeptkunst und partizipativer Kunst auseinander zu setzen. Ihre konzeptuelle Arbeit Grapefruit, eine Ideensammlung für Performances in Buchform, die 1964 entstand, liegt der Ausstellung in Berlin zugrunde. Ono behandelt die Themen Gewalt, Heilung, Veränderung oder Liebe mit sehr unterschiedlichen Mitteln und hinterfragt die Dichotomie von Persönlichem und Globalem.
Die Arbeit ‚A Hole‘, eine zugleich fragile, aber auch brutal anmutende Skulptur, welche einen Schwerpunkt in der Ausstellung bildet, besteht aus einer Glasfront, in deren Mitte ein sternförmiges Einschussloch prangt. Ins Glas eingraviert ist eine Aufforderung: „Gehen Sie auf die andere Seite der Glasscheibe und blicken Sie durch das Loch.“ Onos Anweisung fordert auf, beide Perspektiven, die des Aggressors sowie die des Opfers, einzunehmen, und somit zwei entgegengesetzte Standpunkte zu beziehen.
Yoko Ono sagt zu ihrer Ausstellung: „Ich will auf die Gewalt hinweisen, die überall in der Welt passiert. Ich bitte die Menschen, die in die Ausstellung kommen, ein Zeugnis einer persönlichen Gewalterfahrung mitzubringen, beispielsweise ein Foto oder einen Text, die an der Wand angebracht werden sollen. Im Obergeschoss der Galerie wird es hingegen einen Raum geben, in dem man einfach lächeln soll.“ Das Lächeln der Besucher wird auf Video aufgenommen und im Ausstellungsraum projiziert.
Yoko Ono wurde 1933 in Tokio geboren. Sie wuchs in Japan und New York auf und besuchte das Sarah Lawrence College. Ono gilt als eine der bedeutendsten Vertreterinnen der Fluxus-Bewegung der 1960er Jahre. In ihrer Arbeit konzentriert sie sich hauptsächlich auf Performance und Konzeptkunst, wie auch experimentellen Film und Musik. Zu ihren wichtigsten Arbeiten werden die Konzeptarbeit Cut Piece und ihr Buch Grapefruit gezählt (beide 1964). - Ono lebt und arbeitet in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Seit ihrer Gründung im Jahre 2002 in London präsentiert die Galerie Haunch of Venison in London, Berlin und New York ein breites und von Kritikern viel beachtetes Ausstellungsprogramm mit einigen herausragenden Vertretern zeitgenössischer Kunst. Die Berliner Dependance wurde im September 2007 eröffnet.
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THE POISON - Yoko Ono Exhibition, Berlin 2010
Opening: September 10, 2010, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m., Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (September 10 - November 13, 2010)
Haunch of Venison presents Yoko Ono with the fundamentally new installation 'The Gift' from September 10th to November 13th, 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono is considered a pioneer of conceptual art. 'The Gift' consists of films, sound recordings, sculptures and participatory elements and was conceived specifically for the exhibition at 'Haunch of Venison'.
Ono began to engage with conceptual art and participatory art in the 1950s. The exhibition in Berlin is based on her conceptual work Grapefruit, a collection of ideas for performances in book form, which was created in 1964. Ono deals with the themes of violence, healing, change and love using very different means and questions the dichotomy of the personal and the global.
The work 'A Hole', a fragile yet brutal-seeming sculpture that forms a focal point of the exhibition, consists of a glass front with a star-shaped bullet hole in the middle. Engraved into the glass is an instruction: “Go to the other side of the glass pane and look through the hole.” Ono's instruction calls for you to take on both perspectives, that of the aggressor and that of the victim, and thus take two opposite points of view.
Yoko Ono says of her exhibition: “I want to point out the violence that is happening all over the world. I ask people who come to the exhibition to bring with them a testimony of a personal experience of violence, for example a photo or a text, to be hung on the wall. On the upper floor of the gallery, however, there will be a room where you can simply smile.” The visitors' smiles will be recorded on video and projected in the exhibition room.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. She grew up in Japan and New York and attended Sarah Lawrence College. Ono is considered one of the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. Her work focuses primarily on performance and conceptual art, as well as experimental film and music. Her most important works include the conceptual work Cut Piece and her book Grapefruit (both 1964). - Ono lives and works in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Since its founding in London in 2002, the Haunch of Venison gallery has presented a broad and critically acclaimed exhibition program with some outstanding representatives of contemporary art in London, Berlin and New York. The Berlin branch was opened in September 2007.
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Zur Ausstellung DAS GIFT / About the exhibition THE POISON
"Mein neuestes Installationskunstwerk, DAS GIFT, bittet um Ihre Teilnahme, um die Welt von Gewalt zu heilen." - YOKO ONO
"My latest installation artwork, THE POISON, asks for your participation to heal the world of violence." - YOKO ONO
***** Erste Etage / First Floor *****
HELME (STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL) / HELMETS (PIECES OF SKY)
Alte deutsche Helme aus den letzten Kriegen sind hier und bilden einen eigenen seltsamen Wald mit STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL in jedem von ihnen. - Nimm ein Stück Himmel mit nach Hause.
Old German helmets from the last wars are here, creating a strange forest of their own, with PIECES OF SKY in each one of them. - Take home a piece of sky.
SCHATTEN / SHADOWS
Drei Realitätsebenen werden gleichzeitig gezeigt, indem sie sich gegenseitig überlagern und zu einer Realität werden. Die erste Ebene ist das, was in der Welt geschieht. Die zweite Schicht sind die Menschen, die Schatten sind. Die dritte Schicht bist DU, der steht, geht und die beiden Schichten beobachtet und Teil dieser Realität wird.
Three layers of reality are being shown simultaneously, by overlapping each other and becoming one reality. The first layer is what is happening in the world. The second layer is people who are shadows. The third layer is YOU, standing, walking and observing the two layers and becoming part of this reality.
HEIL / HEAL
Eine große Leinwand mit Rissen und Schnitten auf der Leinwand. Sie sind eingeladen, sich am Flicken der Risse und Schnitte zu beteiligen. Denken Sie daran, dass Sie sich selbst und die Welt flicken, während Sie sie flicken.
A large canvas with rips and cuts in the canvas. You are invited to take part in the mending the rips and cuts. Think that you are mending yourself and the world, as you mend.
EIN LOCH / A HOLE
Es ist ein Werk, bei dem man zweimal die Position wechseln muss, um es zu betrachten. Einmal von vorne, um sich selbst als Schütze zu sehen. Einmal von hinten, um sich selbst als denjenigen zu sehen, auf den geschossen wird.
It is a work which asks you to change your position twice to observe it. Once from the front to see yourself as the shooter. Once from the back to see yourself as the one being shot.
MANTEL / COATS
Ganz am Ende des Raumes hängen sieben Mäntel in einer Reihe, die alle den Personen gehören, die sie trugen, als sie aus nächster Nähe erschossen wurden. Gehen Sie durch die sieben Mäntel, um Ihren Schatten mit dem der anderen zu vermischen.
Seven coats hang at the very end of the room in a row, all belonging to people who were wearing the coats when they were shot point blank from close range. Walk through the seven coats to mix your shadows with theirs.
DER SCHREI / SCREAM
Ein Schrei durchschneidet den riesigen Raum, der mit Gewalt aus allen Ecken der Welt gefüllt ist. Es ist die Stimme der Seevögel namens Kittiwakes aus Gateshead in England. Die Geräusche der Kittiwakes sollen der Klang der "Seelen der verlorenen Kinder" sein. Dann hört man die Krähen und Zikaden aus Tokio zusammen schreien.
A scream cuts through the huge room filled with violence from all corners of the world. It’s a voice of the sea birds called Kittiwakes from Gateshead in England. The sounds of Kittiwakes are said to be the sound of the “The Souls of Lost Children.” Then you hear the crows and cicadas from Tokyo screaming together.
TAUSENDFÜSSLER / CENTIPEDES
Als Sie aufschauen, um den SCHREI zu hören, bemerken Sie riesige Tausendfüßler, die an der Wand krabbeln, und die Tatsache, dass die Größe aller Ereignisse im Raum im Verhältnis zu den Tausendfüßlern verschwindend gering ist. - Da wird Ihnen klar, dass der Raum, den Sie für die Weltkarte hielten, nur ein dunkles KELLERGESCHOSS DES TAUSENDFÜSSLERS war.
As you look up to listen to the SCREAM, you notice huge centipedes crawling on the wall, and the fact that the sizes of all happenings in the room are infintessimal in proportion to the centipedes. - You realize then that the room which you thought of as the Map of the World was only a darkish BASEMENT OF CENTIPEDES.
PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT / THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT
Ganz am Ende des ersten Stocks gibt es einen kleinen Raum mit dem Titel PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT, der aus drei Veranstaltungen besteht.
There is a small room at the very end of the first floor called THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT consisting of three events.
Das erste Werk trägt den Titel: / The first work is titled:
ERINNERTE GEWALT / MEMORY OF VIOLENCE
Neun Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin sind an der Wand zu sehen. Es sind Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin aus verschiedenen Epochen, der erste stammt aus dem Jahr 1890. - Sie werden gebeten, Ihre persönlichen Erinnerungen an Gewalt mitzubringen, wenn Sie DAS GIFT betreten.
Sie können sich an GEDENKEN DER GEWALT beteiligen, indem Sie ein Foto, einen Brief und/oder etwas Geschriebenes mitbringen und es an die Leinwände in der Zeit und an dem Ort in den Karten anheften, wo es Ihrer Meinung nach hingehört - vielleicht an einem Ort, an dem Sie einst gelebt haben, an dem Ihre Familie einst lebte oder an dem Sie eine besondere Erinnerung haben, die Sie mit uns teilen möchten. Da immer mehr Erinnerungen an Gewalt zu den Leinwänden hinzugefügt werden, ist es möglich, dass Ihre Erinnerung von den Erinnerungen anderer überdeckt wird.
Nine canvasses of maps of Berlin are on the wall. They are canvases of street maps of Berlin from different periods, the first one being from 1890. - You are asked to bring your personal memories of violence when you enter DAS GIFT.
You can participate in MEMORY OF VIOLENCE by bringing a photograph, a letter, and/or something you have written, and pinning them onto the canvases in the period and the place in the maps you feel they belong – perhaps in a location where you once lived, or where your family once lived, or where you have a particular memory you wish to share with us. As more and more memories of violence are added to the canvases, it’s possible that your memory may be covered by memories of others.
Das zweite Werk von DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT ist
The second work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
SAMEN / SEEDS
Auf dem Boden dieses Raumes DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT liegen Mullkugeln mit Grapefruitkernen darin. - Sie sind eingeladen, immer mehr Gaze um diese Kerne zu wickeln, bis die Kugeln so groß werden, dass sie nicht mehr aus dem Raum herauskommen.
Balls made of gauze with grapefruit seeds in them are on the floor of this room THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT. - You are invited to continue to wrap more gauze around these seeds until the balls become so large that they cannot get out of the room.
Das dritte Werk von THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT ist
The third work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
ZERSCHLAGENES KRISTALL / SHATTERED GLASS
Fegen Sie den Raum mit einem Besen.
Sweep the room with a broom.
***** Zweite Etage / Second Floor *****
Der letzte Raum der Ausstellung, der sich direkt über dem GEDÄCHTNIS DER GEWALT befindet, ist…
The last room in the show, which is a room right above the MEMORY OF VIOLENCE, is…
BERLINER LÄCHELN / BERLIN SMILE
Setzen Sie sich auf den dafür vorgesehenen Stuhl vor die Kamera und schenken Sie der Welt Ihr Lächeln aus Berlin. Ihr Lächeln wird sich zu anderen Lächeln aus anderen Städten und Ländern gesellen, indem es ins Internet gestellt und in meinem Archiv aufbewahrt wird, damit es bei jeder Gelegenheit gezeigt werden kann. Es ist eine Petition für den Frieden.
Sit on the designated chair in front of the camera, and give your smile to the world from Berlin. Your smile will join other smiles from other cities and countries, by being sent out on the internet, and being also preserved in my archive to be shown whenever there is a chance. It is a petition for peace.
CLOUDS
There are 4 CLOUDS – at 125m, 225m, 300m and 500m. Inspired by the writings from Yoko’s GRAPEFRUIT and her album artwork for IMAGINE and LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO, these are platforms where you can take in the view, meet, talk and dance, while clouds magically form under your feet. You can fly or teleport between these platforms using the CONTROL PANEL, and from the top platform, you can take a parachute jump back down to the base and enjoy the view.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
‘I dedicate this light tower to John Lennon.
My love for you is forever.’
Yoko Ono
‘Imagine all the people living life in peace’
John Lennon
‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.’
Yoko Ono
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
9 OCTOBER 2009
On Friday 9th October 2009, Yoko Ono will be in Iceland for the annual lighting of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
Later the same evening, at 10.30pm (Reykjavik time), Yoko will unveil a new IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND in Second Life, an online virtual world.
You are invited to join us on IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND for this event.
SECOND LIFE
Second Life is the internet’s largest user-created 3D virtual world community, designed and built by its inhabitants.
It’s an online universe brimming with people and possibilities: a place to connect, shop, work, love, explore, and just be.
You can find out more about it here.
Membership is free.
GET STARTED
Sign up to Second Life here.
Download the necessary software for your PC or Mac here.
That’s it! You’re ready to enter Second Life.
There’s an easy and very helpful guide to getting started here.
Once you have entered Second Life, you will find IMAGINE PEACE TOWER Island here.
UNVEILING: WORLDWIDE DATES AND TIMES
The unveiling ceremony will begin at approximately the following dates and times:
Oct 9th 02.30pm Anchorage
Oct 9th 03.30pm Los Angeles
Oct 9th 04.30pm Guatemala
Oct 9th 05.30pm Chicago
Oct 9th 06.30pm New York, Montreal & Toronto
Oct 9th 07.30pm Rio de Janeiro
Oct 9th 10.30pm Reykjavik
Oct 9th 11.30pm Liverpool & London
Oct 10th 00.30am Europe
Oct 10th 01.30am Baghdad
Oct 10th 02.30am Moscow
Oct 10th 03.30am Karachi
Oct 10th 04.30am Dhaka
Oct 10th 05.30am Bangkok
Oct 10th 06.30am Shanghai
Oct 10th 07.30am Tokyo
Oct 10th 08.30am Sydney
Oct 10th 09.30am Vladivostok
Oct 10th 10.30am Suva
Oct 10th 11.30am Auckland
Oct 10th 12.30pm Kiritimati
You can check what time the event will be happening here.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
LIGHTING UP TIMES AFTER THE CEREMONY
After the opening ceremony, the Second Life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will begin its cycle of illumination approximately 15 minutes after sunset on every Second Life day and will remain illuminated until dawn. The days are much shorter in Second Life than in the real world. Sunset happens in Second Life every day at the following times, both am and pm:
01.30, 05.30, 09.30: Chicago, Baghdad, Bangkok, Vladivostok
02.30, 06.30, 10.30: Anchorage, Montreal, Toronto, Reykjavik, Moscow, Shanghai, Suva
03.30, 07.30, 11.30: Los Angeles, Rio de Janiero, Liverpool, London, Karachi, Tokyo, Auckland
04.30, 08.30, 12.30: Guatemala, Europe, Dhaka, Sydney, Kiritimati
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
When you arrive at the island, you will first visit the VISITORS CENTER.
IN THE VISITORS CENTER:
ONOCHORD DOCUMENTARY FILM
explains more of the history and philosophy of Yoko Ono’s ONOCHORD.
ONOCHORD TORCHES
are to hold in your hand and flash “i ii iii” (I love you) to one another.
ONOCHORD POSTCARDS
are to explain the message and send to your friends.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER DOCUMENTARY
explains the history and philosophy of Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
IMAGINE PEACE POSTCARDS, BUTTONS, T-SHIRTS etc
are free and for you to share with your friends.
IMAGINE PEACE & IMAGINE PEACE TOWER BOOKS
are available to read in the VISITORS CENTER.
WISH TREES
Outside the VISITORS CENTER and around the island you will find WISH TREES.
Make a WISH and your wish will also be sent to the real life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland.
BOAT RIDES
Also outside the VISITORS CENTER are some boats in which you can travel around the island.
CONTROL PANEL
These are stationed around the island, and enable various modes of dancing as well as teleporting you to different vantage points on and above the island:
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER WISHING WELL
The wishing well of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER consists of white panels inscribed with the words IMAGINE PEACE in 24 different languages
CLOUDS
There are 4 CLOUDS – at 125m, 225m, 300m and 500m. Inspired by the writings from Yoko’s GRAPEFRUIT and her album artwork for IMAGINE and LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO, these are platforms where you can take in the view, meet, talk and dance, while clouds magically form under your feet. You can fly or teleport between these platforms using the CONTROL PANEL, and from the top platform, you can take a parachute jump back down to the base and enjoy the view.
HOT SPRING SPA
Volcanic springs are common in Iceland. In fact, the real IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is entirely run on Geothermal Energy – from naturally occurring hot water. Here is a place to meditate, unwind and enjoy the view.
HOT AIR BALLOON
Inspired by John and Yoko’s film ‘Apotheosis” (which was all filmed from a hot air balloon) you can take a ride around the island on the IMAGINE PEACE balloon.
LINKS
Beginning October 9th you can find the Second Life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER here.
More information about the real world IMAGINE PEACE TOWER
More information about Yoko Ono’s WISH TREES
More information on SL Developer Herzog-Brenham
Original article: ROLE magazine (Oct 2009)
SAN ANTONIO CURRENT
September 26-October 2, 2007 ● SAN ANTONIO CURRENT
-- Page 5
ON THE COVER
An "Imagine
Peace" billboard
rises above the
9-11 memorial on
Highway 90, part
of the Yoko Ono:
Imagine Peace
retrospective that
opens at USTA this
week. See story,
page 23. Photo by
Antonio Padilla.
-- Page 23
www2.sacurrent.com/util/printready.asp?id=67475
ARTS
A retrospective of Yoko Ono’s conceptual and
performance-based work opens at the UTSA
1604 campus and on billboards around town
this week
Double jeopardy
Another unpopular war, another message from the pop-culture phenomenon we love to misunderstand
By Elaine Wolff
ewolff@sacurrent.com
On hold for Yoko Ono, and the phone system is playing “Watching the
Wheels,” from Double Fantasy, the “comeback” album released by Ono
and John Lennon shortly before he was murdered in New York on
December 8, 1980. I’m back in my childhood basement in Minnesota,
lounging on ribbon-candy shag carpet while the turntable plays. Ronald
Reagan’s Morning in America hasn’t chased the smell of patchouli and
cultural revolution from the folds of my sister’s tie-dyed prom dress
yet, and the dropouts I imagine changing the world look like ashram
devotees, not a young Bill Gates. Even now, when I hear the song I
experience a yearning sense of possibility, which makes me realize that
I may be a Beatles fan, but I’m the anti-war child of the post-Beatles
Lennon.
Still waiting. Someone picks up the line and puts it back on hold.
“Wheels” is followed by “Nobody Told Me,” the hit single from Milk and Honey, which Ono completed after Lennon’s death and released in 1984.
1984. We haven’t realized George Orwell’s darkest predictions yet. No one — well, almost no one — imagines the vast ’borg of technological Joneses that we will become in two short decades. Name the year since Reagan took office at the beginning of that same decade to which the refrain “strange days indeed” doesn’t apply. It’s hard not to wonder wistfully what Lennon, that artistic chameleon, would have made of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9-11, WMDs, the iPhone (John Lennon on the internet!).
And harder still to remember that while Lennon morphed attitudes and methods almost by the hour, his greatest influence — artistic and personal, responsible if nothing else for Lennon’s sporadic rejection of commercialism and public expectation — has remained unfashionably constant while history has circled around to meet her. To say I’m a child of the post-Beatles Lennon is to say that I’m a child of Yoko Ono as much as John.
Yoko Ono, Japanese child of privilege, World War II refugee, media whipping girl, was an up-and-coming artist in 1966 when John Lennon walked into London’s Indica Gallery — a story that is now apocryphal in the Beatles legend, but deserves equal weight in Ono’s story, because it is in effect the day the artist and the pop-culture phenomenon traded places. Before the ’60s were over, Lennon and Ono would capitalize on his fame to draw attention to the war in Vietnam, and on a related note, to the Nixon Administration’s aversion to political criticism.
1969’s infamous honeymoon Bed-Ins led to 1971’s utopian “Imagine,” and over the next few years, Lennon would challenge his adoring fan base with songs titled “Woman is the Nigger of the World” and “I Don’t Wanna be a Soldier Mama.”
But we just couldn’t get over the Beatles and the homewrecker role we had assigned Ono to see the depth of her influence, to notice that two talented iconoclasts were creating art together and in response to one another. A generation later, the media would embrace her as a fashion icon, sometimes a musician, but never the conceptual artist that led a reliable Billboard-hit generator off the beaten musical path — even as her forerunners and compatriots became art-world crossover successes: Claes Oldenburg, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik.
But Ono moved in the same (sometimes belatedly) exalted circles as those nearly household names, participating in influential live performances as part of Fluxus — an early 1960s movement that drew its energy from an antiart-establishment attitude and a critique of storefront capitalism — adopting and developing themes that are recognizable today in Onochord, an interactive work that encourages participants to blink “I love you,” part John Cage, part Morse Code, using a small flashlight, as well as in her current “Imagine Peace” billboards.
-- Page 24
San Antonio artist and teacher Ken Little will adapt Ono’s noted 1964 Fluxus performance “Cut Piece” on October 26 as part of Yoko Ono: Imagine Peace, which opens in San Antonio September 26. The show, which debuted at Ohio’s University of Akron, tries to restore balance to the Ono-Lennon artistic relationship. “Imagine,” after all, was inspired by Ono’s “instruction pieces,” in turn the legacy of a decade that was throwing off the dogma and academic hegemony of post-WWII Abstract Expressionism as violently as possible, preferably with a large, interactive audience at hand. The Bed-Ins were perfect Fluxus performance works, accessible, anti-establishment,
socially progressive — and visionary in their attempt to use mass media to spread a message of their choosing.
In 1965, like Oldenberg and Fluxus founder George Maciunas before her, Ono parodied the art marketplace with her “Conceptual Sales List.” Ono and Lennon’s collaborative work built on the notion of ideas as commodities with the power to counteract physical reality. “It’s got to be sold to the man in the street,” Lennon told Newsweek following the Montreal Bed-In that produced the wildly popular recording of “Give Peace a Chance.” “We want to make peace a big business for everybody.”
Lennon was in turn big business for Ono and almost everything he touched, and Imagine Peace doesn’t shy away from his symbiotic influence on Ono. In part because of his early interest, and premature death, one of Ono’s “Conceptual Sales List” items becomes reality next month on an island in Iceland: the “Imagine Peace Tower,” 20 meters high and engraved with the lyrics of the eponymous song, will be unveiled on October 9, Lennon’s 67th birth anniversary.
Just ahead of the San Antonio show’s opening, Ono spoke with the Current by phone.
Even from the beginning you thought about and addressed the idea of commodification, the way that ideas become a product for consumption. And it seems like that’s even more true now. Do you think with your work that that aids it, or ...?
Well, still things like this happen. The billboard and all that — it’s not a commodity at all, it’s just a message, you know? Well, in the world where everything’s become commodity, it’s kind of difficult to keep on doing it, but I think it’s not really that difficult. I think we should just step up and do it.
And, too, with celebrityhood, sometimes people look at Fluxus and they say that’s the time when art became more about the individual’s ideas and their opinions, as opposed to just the work itself.
Well, I don’t know, because I’m just right in the midst of it, in a way, in that I’m an artist who’s been doing things hopefully that meant something to people, etcetera. That’s for the critics, I think, what happened historically, etcetera. I think Fluxus is a good thing that happened, and it’s still going on. When George [Maciunas] decided to call it Fluxus, I don’t think he thought that it would go on like this. But also I’m sure that he would have loved it.
I’ve noticed that here in San Antonio there’s been a renewed interest in Dadaism, and movements that are also related to those concepts, again in a time of war and conflict. Do you think there’s a reason that those types of art movements or ideas are more appealing when the world seems to be ...
But I think there’s a big difference between Dadaism and what, for instance, I’m doing. Dada was actually expressing a kind of sadness, or whatever it is, reflecting what was going on at the time and not liking it. So it was kind of rebellious art, shall we say. But I’m not rebelling against anything, I’m just trying to make a more positive world by doing things together.
During [your and John Lennon’s] Year of Peace, which this exhibit is partly about, one of the things you said is that we need to remember that it’s not about “them,” there’s not a “them” that’s doing something bad, it’s about us as a whole ... how does the message “imagine peace” encourage us to think that way?
-- Page 25
Well, the fact that we’re always curious about “them,” and it’s not very logical to be like that, we should do what we think is right and don’t put our attention too much on others.
How important is it to you [for viewers] to see parallels between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War when they go to the exhibit?
Well, I think that really it’s getting to a point that we can be very, very positive about the situation, because I really think that everybody’s starting to see what’s happening. And so we can all stand together and try to change. In old days, we used to have so much respect for lawyers, doctors, politicians, you know? And now we’re starting to think, wait a minute, what was this respect about, so we’re starting to wise up and starting to mature, so to speak, and we’re starting to take responsibility ourselves.
Is it important for you as an artist to feel that you see an impact from your work, or feel a response from the audience?
Well, you never know what people are thinking, really, so if you focus on that too much, you go crazy. There was a very interesting thing: John and I were walking down the street, John Lennon and me, and a fan came and said, “John I loved your record, the newest record’s fantastic.”
So [John] said, “Oh, which song? And the guy sort of like looked, “Um, uh ... “
“Oh, are you talking about this record? Which title was it?”
“Uh, um ... “
The fact that the guy wanted so much to please John that he probably didn’t listen to the record or buy it or anything, but just thought that if you meet somebody like John you’re supposed to say, “I love your record.” So there are many people who might say something to me, or who might say that they dislike my thing or whatever, but you never know what that really means.
When the war in Iraq first began, there was some criticism saying that the art world was not being active or political enough, but it seems since then [it’s] become very involved in expressing values or feelings.
The thing is, yes, some people are very courageous in coming out, sort of saying something about what’s going on now, commenting on it, but even if you don’t do that, and most people say, well, most of them are doing that — don’t be negative about it, because just the fact that you are being an artist and doing an artwork in a world situation like this is very courageous. As you said about the society that’s more and more increasing the idea of commodity, and all that: So why are you going to be an artist? It’s not the best way to make big money.
The celebrityhood that’s conferred on [some] artists now, I feel is a way of saying, you won’t get rich being an artist, but maybe we’ll make you famous for a little while instead.
I think that — I say this so many times, but I still should say this — this whole world, there are two industries, peace industry and war industry. And the war industry people are so together, they’re so united in what they want to do, so they don’t even have to talk to each other, they just action, that’s it. Whereas the peace-industry people are so meticulous, and idealists, and so fastidious that they just keep on arguing and discussing endlessly, that, oh no, this is not the right way; oh, your way is not right; oh my way — so we can never get together.
Are we always doomed to be a step behind then?
Exactly. We can never win over the war-industry people. The fact that you’re just being a florist or something — that is fine, you’re in the peace industry, you’re doing something peaceful rather than making weapons and killing people. So basically we have to embrace everybody in the peace industry instead of being snobs and saying, oh, that’s not right, or why are you just a florist. It’s beautiful that all of us are in the peace industry. So, the next step is for us to have some understanding about each other, forgiving each other, and get together. And if we don’t do that, if the peace industry is not as strong as the war industry, well, of course we’re always going to have
war. •
Antonia Padilla
The peace industry meets the war industry; one of Yoko Ono's "Imagine Peace" installations on Highway 90 near the 9-11 memmorial.
VISUAL ART
Yoko Ono:
Imagine Peace
Featuring John and Yoko’s Year of Peace
10am-4pm Fri,
1-4pm Sat
Through Oct 28
Opening reception: 5-9pm Wed, Sep 26
UTSA Art Gallery
UTSA 1604 Campus
FILM
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
6pm Mon, Oct 1
Retama Auditorium
UTSA 1604 Campus
YOKO ONO: IMAGINE PEACE Featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace
September 26th - October 28th, 2007
UTSA Art Gallery / Department of Art and Art History
The University of Texas at San Antonio
by Yoko Ono
Indica Gallery 1966
PLAY IT BY TRUST aka WHITE CHESS SET (1966)
Play it for as long as you can remember
who is your opponent and
who is your own self.
Yoko Ono
Play It By Trust presents an all-white chessboard with all-white pieces, and alludes to the ideal of chess championed by Marcel Duchamp as "the landscape of the soul." Ono's game demands the ultimate abstraction by leaving all but the first few moves to be played entirely in the mind. With minimal and conceptual means so typical of her art, she reduces the game to its fundamental structure-an opposition defined by black versus white-to provoke a sage contemplation: How to proceed when the opponent is indistinguishable from oneself?
YO: When I created Play It By Trust I wasn’t thinking about Duchamp at all. Many artists have worked with chess, but they usually worked with the decorative aspect of the chess pieces. I wanted to create a new chess game, making a fundamental rather than decorative change. The white chess set is a sort of life situation. Life is not all black and white, you don't know what is yours and what is theirs. You have to convince people what is yours. In the chess situation it is simple if you are black then black is yours. But this is like a life situation, where you have to play it by convincing each other.
People think that I'm doing something shocking and ask me if I'm trying to shock people. The most shocking thing to me is that people have war, fight with each other and moreover take it for granted. The kind of thing I'm doing is almost too simple. I'm not interested in being unique or different. Everyone is different. No two persons have the same mouth shape for example, and so without making any effort we're all different. The problem is not how to become different or unique, but how to share an experience, how to be the same almost, how to communicate.
The concept is my work. In the art world, work is shown in a museum and a lot of people or a few people will see it, then if it’s bought by someone, that’s the end of it, or it comes back every once in a while. So I like the idea that Play It By Trust is repeated in different places, because the environment makes a big difference to the piece. Again, it’s the concept that is the work.
Untitled Invitation (Water Talk, from the exhibition, This is Not Here), 1971. Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY. Offset print on paper. BAM
(for English scroll down)
Eröffnung: 10. September 2010, 18:00 - 21:00 Uhr, Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (10. September - 13. November 2010)
Haunch of Venison präsentiert Yoko Ono mit der grundlegend neuen Installation ‚Das Gift‘ vom 10. September bis zum 13. November 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono gilt als Pionierin der Konzeptkunst. ‚Das Gift‘ besteht aus Filmen, Tonaufnahmen, Skulpturen und partizipativen Elementen und wurde eigens für die Ausstellung bei ‚Haunch of Venison‘ konzipiert.
Ono begann in den 1950er Jahren sich mit Konzeptkunst und partizipativer Kunst auseinander zu setzen. Ihre konzeptuelle Arbeit Grapefruit, eine Ideensammlung für Performances in Buchform, die 1964 entstand, liegt der Ausstellung in Berlin zugrunde. Ono behandelt die Themen Gewalt, Heilung, Veränderung oder Liebe mit sehr unterschiedlichen Mitteln und hinterfragt die Dichotomie von Persönlichem und Globalem.
Die Arbeit ‚A Hole‘, eine zugleich fragile, aber auch brutal anmutende Skulptur, welche einen Schwerpunkt in der Ausstellung bildet, besteht aus einer Glasfront, in deren Mitte ein sternförmiges Einschussloch prangt. Ins Glas eingraviert ist eine Aufforderung: „Gehen Sie auf die andere Seite der Glasscheibe und blicken Sie durch das Loch.“ Onos Anweisung fordert auf, beide Perspektiven, die des Aggressors sowie die des Opfers, einzunehmen, und somit zwei entgegengesetzte Standpunkte zu beziehen.
Yoko Ono sagt zu ihrer Ausstellung: „Ich will auf die Gewalt hinweisen, die überall in der Welt passiert. Ich bitte die Menschen, die in die Ausstellung kommen, ein Zeugnis einer persönlichen Gewalterfahrung mitzubringen, beispielsweise ein Foto oder einen Text, die an der Wand angebracht werden sollen. Im Obergeschoss der Galerie wird es hingegen einen Raum geben, in dem man einfach lächeln soll.“ Das Lächeln der Besucher wird auf Video aufgenommen und im Ausstellungsraum projiziert.
Yoko Ono wurde 1933 in Tokio geboren. Sie wuchs in Japan und New York auf und besuchte das Sarah Lawrence College. Ono gilt als eine der bedeutendsten Vertreterinnen der Fluxus-Bewegung der 1960er Jahre. In ihrer Arbeit konzentriert sie sich hauptsächlich auf Performance und Konzeptkunst, wie auch experimentellen Film und Musik. Zu ihren wichtigsten Arbeiten werden die Konzeptarbeit Cut Piece und ihr Buch Grapefruit gezählt (beide 1964). - Ono lebt und arbeitet in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Seit ihrer Gründung im Jahre 2002 in London präsentiert die Galerie Haunch of Venison in London, Berlin und New York ein breites und von Kritikern viel beachtetes Ausstellungsprogramm mit einigen herausragenden Vertretern zeitgenössischer Kunst. Die Berliner Dependance wurde im September 2007 eröffnet.
____________________________________________________
THE POISON - Yoko Ono Exhibition, Berlin 2010
Opening: September 10, 2010, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m., Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (September 10 - November 13, 2010)
Haunch of Venison presents Yoko Ono with the fundamentally new installation 'The Gift' from September 10th to November 13th, 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono is considered a pioneer of conceptual art. 'The Gift' consists of films, sound recordings, sculptures and participatory elements and was conceived specifically for the exhibition at 'Haunch of Venison'.
Ono began to engage with conceptual art and participatory art in the 1950s. The exhibition in Berlin is based on her conceptual work Grapefruit, a collection of ideas for performances in book form, which was created in 1964. Ono deals with the themes of violence, healing, change and love using very different means and questions the dichotomy of the personal and the global.
The work 'A Hole', a fragile yet brutal-seeming sculpture that forms a focal point of the exhibition, consists of a glass front with a star-shaped bullet hole in the middle. Engraved into the glass is an instruction: “Go to the other side of the glass pane and look through the hole.” Ono's instruction calls for you to take on both perspectives, that of the aggressor and that of the victim, and thus take two opposite points of view.
Yoko Ono says of her exhibition: “I want to point out the violence that is happening all over the world. I ask people who come to the exhibition to bring with them a testimony of a personal experience of violence, for example a photo or a text, to be hung on the wall. On the upper floor of the gallery, however, there will be a room where you can simply smile.” The visitors' smiles will be recorded on video and projected in the exhibition room.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. She grew up in Japan and New York and attended Sarah Lawrence College. Ono is considered one of the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. Her work focuses primarily on performance and conceptual art, as well as experimental film and music. Her most important works include the conceptual work Cut Piece and her book Grapefruit (both 1964). - Ono lives and works in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Since its founding in London in 2002, the Haunch of Venison gallery has presented a broad and critically acclaimed exhibition program with some outstanding representatives of contemporary art in London, Berlin and New York. The Berlin branch was opened in September 2007.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zur Ausstellung DAS GIFT / About the exhibition THE POISON
"Mein neuestes Installationskunstwerk, DAS GIFT, bittet um Ihre Teilnahme, um die Welt von Gewalt zu heilen." - YOKO ONO
"My latest installation artwork, THE POISON, asks for your participation to heal the world of violence." - YOKO ONO
***** Erste Etage / First Floor *****
HELME (STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL) / HELMETS (PIECES OF SKY)
Alte deutsche Helme aus den letzten Kriegen sind hier und bilden einen eigenen seltsamen Wald mit STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL in jedem von ihnen. - Nimm ein Stück Himmel mit nach Hause.
Old German helmets from the last wars are here, creating a strange forest of their own, with PIECES OF SKY in each one of them. - Take home a piece of sky.
SCHATTEN / SHADOWS
Drei Realitätsebenen werden gleichzeitig gezeigt, indem sie sich gegenseitig überlagern und zu einer Realität werden. Die erste Ebene ist das, was in der Welt geschieht. Die zweite Schicht sind die Menschen, die Schatten sind. Die dritte Schicht bist DU, der steht, geht und die beiden Schichten beobachtet und Teil dieser Realität wird.
Three layers of reality are being shown simultaneously, by overlapping each other and becoming one reality. The first layer is what is happening in the world. The second layer is people who are shadows. The third layer is YOU, standing, walking and observing the two layers and becoming part of this reality.
HEIL / HEAL
Eine große Leinwand mit Rissen und Schnitten auf der Leinwand. Sie sind eingeladen, sich am Flicken der Risse und Schnitte zu beteiligen. Denken Sie daran, dass Sie sich selbst und die Welt flicken, während Sie sie flicken.
A large canvas with rips and cuts in the canvas. You are invited to take part in the mending the rips and cuts. Think that you are mending yourself and the world, as you mend.
EIN LOCH / A HOLE
Es ist ein Werk, bei dem man zweimal die Position wechseln muss, um es zu betrachten. Einmal von vorne, um sich selbst als Schütze zu sehen. Einmal von hinten, um sich selbst als denjenigen zu sehen, auf den geschossen wird.
It is a work which asks you to change your position twice to observe it. Once from the front to see yourself as the shooter. Once from the back to see yourself as the one being shot.
MANTEL / COATS
Ganz am Ende des Raumes hängen sieben Mäntel in einer Reihe, die alle den Personen gehören, die sie trugen, als sie aus nächster Nähe erschossen wurden. Gehen Sie durch die sieben Mäntel, um Ihren Schatten mit dem der anderen zu vermischen.
Seven coats hang at the very end of the room in a row, all belonging to people who were wearing the coats when they were shot point blank from close range. Walk through the seven coats to mix your shadows with theirs.
DER SCHREI / SCREAM
Ein Schrei durchschneidet den riesigen Raum, der mit Gewalt aus allen Ecken der Welt gefüllt ist. Es ist die Stimme der Seevögel namens Kittiwakes aus Gateshead in England. Die Geräusche der Kittiwakes sollen der Klang der "Seelen der verlorenen Kinder" sein. Dann hört man die Krähen und Zikaden aus Tokio zusammen schreien.
A scream cuts through the huge room filled with violence from all corners of the world. It’s a voice of the sea birds called Kittiwakes from Gateshead in England. The sounds of Kittiwakes are said to be the sound of the “The Souls of Lost Children.” Then you hear the crows and cicadas from Tokyo screaming together.
TAUSENDFÜSSLER / CENTIPEDES
Als Sie aufschauen, um den SCHREI zu hören, bemerken Sie riesige Tausendfüßler, die an der Wand krabbeln, und die Tatsache, dass die Größe aller Ereignisse im Raum im Verhältnis zu den Tausendfüßlern verschwindend gering ist. - Da wird Ihnen klar, dass der Raum, den Sie für die Weltkarte hielten, nur ein dunkles KELLERGESCHOSS DES TAUSENDFÜSSLERS war.
As you look up to listen to the SCREAM, you notice huge centipedes crawling on the wall, and the fact that the sizes of all happenings in the room are infintessimal in proportion to the centipedes. - You realize then that the room which you thought of as the Map of the World was only a darkish BASEMENT OF CENTIPEDES.
PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT / THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT
Ganz am Ende des ersten Stocks gibt es einen kleinen Raum mit dem Titel PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT, der aus drei Veranstaltungen besteht.
There is a small room at the very end of the first floor called THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT consisting of three events.
Das erste Werk trägt den Titel: / The first work is titled:
ERINNERTE GEWALT / MEMORY OF VIOLENCE
Neun Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin sind an der Wand zu sehen. Es sind Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin aus verschiedenen Epochen, der erste stammt aus dem Jahr 1890. - Sie werden gebeten, Ihre persönlichen Erinnerungen an Gewalt mitzubringen, wenn Sie DAS GIFT betreten.
Sie können sich an GEDENKEN DER GEWALT beteiligen, indem Sie ein Foto, einen Brief und/oder etwas Geschriebenes mitbringen und es an die Leinwände in der Zeit und an dem Ort in den Karten anheften, wo es Ihrer Meinung nach hingehört - vielleicht an einem Ort, an dem Sie einst gelebt haben, an dem Ihre Familie einst lebte oder an dem Sie eine besondere Erinnerung haben, die Sie mit uns teilen möchten. Da immer mehr Erinnerungen an Gewalt zu den Leinwänden hinzugefügt werden, ist es möglich, dass Ihre Erinnerung von den Erinnerungen anderer überdeckt wird.
Nine canvasses of maps of Berlin are on the wall. They are canvases of street maps of Berlin from different periods, the first one being from 1890. - You are asked to bring your personal memories of violence when you enter DAS GIFT.
You can participate in MEMORY OF VIOLENCE by bringing a photograph, a letter, and/or something you have written, and pinning them onto the canvases in the period and the place in the maps you feel they belong – perhaps in a location where you once lived, or where your family once lived, or where you have a particular memory you wish to share with us. As more and more memories of violence are added to the canvases, it’s possible that your memory may be covered by memories of others.
Das zweite Werk von DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT ist
The second work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
SAMEN / SEEDS
Auf dem Boden dieses Raumes DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT liegen Mullkugeln mit Grapefruitkernen darin. - Sie sind eingeladen, immer mehr Gaze um diese Kerne zu wickeln, bis die Kugeln so groß werden, dass sie nicht mehr aus dem Raum herauskommen.
Balls made of gauze with grapefruit seeds in them are on the floor of this room THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT. - You are invited to continue to wrap more gauze around these seeds until the balls become so large that they cannot get out of the room.
Das dritte Werk von THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT ist
The third work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
ZERSCHLAGENES KRISTALL / SHATTERED GLASS
Fegen Sie den Raum mit einem Besen.
Sweep the room with a broom.
***** Zweite Etage / Second Floor *****
Der letzte Raum der Ausstellung, der sich direkt über dem GEDÄCHTNIS DER GEWALT befindet, ist…
The last room in the show, which is a room right above the MEMORY OF VIOLENCE, is…
BERLINER LÄCHELN / BERLIN SMILE
Setzen Sie sich auf den dafür vorgesehenen Stuhl vor die Kamera und schenken Sie der Welt Ihr Lächeln aus Berlin. Ihr Lächeln wird sich zu anderen Lächeln aus anderen Städten und Ländern gesellen, indem es ins Internet gestellt und in meinem Archiv aufbewahrt wird, damit es bei jeder Gelegenheit gezeigt werden kann. Es ist eine Petition für den Frieden.
Sit on the designated chair in front of the camera, and give your smile to the world from Berlin. Your smile will join other smiles from other cities and countries, by being sent out on the internet, and being also preserved in my archive to be shown whenever there is a chance. It is a petition for peace.
After a week-long Bed-In for Peace in Montreal and a Peace conference at The University of Ottowa, John and Yoko visited Niagara Falls in Canada at 4pm on Wednesday 4 June 1969.
They were on their way to Toronto and then home to London.
On the same day (4 June 1969), the Beatles single “The Ballad Of John and Yoko” was released.
(for English scroll down)
Eröffnung: 10. September 2010, 18:00 - 21:00 Uhr, Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (10. September - 13. November 2010)
Haunch of Venison präsentiert Yoko Ono mit der grundlegend neuen Installation ‚Das Gift‘ vom 10. September bis zum 13. November 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono gilt als Pionierin der Konzeptkunst. ‚Das Gift‘ besteht aus Filmen, Tonaufnahmen, Skulpturen und partizipativen Elementen und wurde eigens für die Ausstellung bei ‚Haunch of Venison‘ konzipiert.
Ono begann in den 1950er Jahren sich mit Konzeptkunst und partizipativer Kunst auseinander zu setzen. Ihre konzeptuelle Arbeit Grapefruit, eine Ideensammlung für Performances in Buchform, die 1964 entstand, liegt der Ausstellung in Berlin zugrunde. Ono behandelt die Themen Gewalt, Heilung, Veränderung oder Liebe mit sehr unterschiedlichen Mitteln und hinterfragt die Dichotomie von Persönlichem und Globalem.
Die Arbeit ‚A Hole‘, eine zugleich fragile, aber auch brutal anmutende Skulptur, welche einen Schwerpunkt in der Ausstellung bildet, besteht aus einer Glasfront, in deren Mitte ein sternförmiges Einschussloch prangt. Ins Glas eingraviert ist eine Aufforderung: „Gehen Sie auf die andere Seite der Glasscheibe und blicken Sie durch das Loch.“ Onos Anweisung fordert auf, beide Perspektiven, die des Aggressors sowie die des Opfers, einzunehmen, und somit zwei entgegengesetzte Standpunkte zu beziehen.
Yoko Ono sagt zu ihrer Ausstellung: „Ich will auf die Gewalt hinweisen, die überall in der Welt passiert. Ich bitte die Menschen, die in die Ausstellung kommen, ein Zeugnis einer persönlichen Gewalterfahrung mitzubringen, beispielsweise ein Foto oder einen Text, die an der Wand angebracht werden sollen. Im Obergeschoss der Galerie wird es hingegen einen Raum geben, in dem man einfach lächeln soll.“ Das Lächeln der Besucher wird auf Video aufgenommen und im Ausstellungsraum projiziert.
Yoko Ono wurde 1933 in Tokio geboren. Sie wuchs in Japan und New York auf und besuchte das Sarah Lawrence College. Ono gilt als eine der bedeutendsten Vertreterinnen der Fluxus-Bewegung der 1960er Jahre. In ihrer Arbeit konzentriert sie sich hauptsächlich auf Performance und Konzeptkunst, wie auch experimentellen Film und Musik. Zu ihren wichtigsten Arbeiten werden die Konzeptarbeit Cut Piece und ihr Buch Grapefruit gezählt (beide 1964). - Ono lebt und arbeitet in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Seit ihrer Gründung im Jahre 2002 in London präsentiert die Galerie Haunch of Venison in London, Berlin und New York ein breites und von Kritikern viel beachtetes Ausstellungsprogramm mit einigen herausragenden Vertretern zeitgenössischer Kunst. Die Berliner Dependance wurde im September 2007 eröffnet.
____________________________________________________
THE POISON - Yoko Ono Exhibition, Berlin 2010
Opening: September 10, 2010, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m., Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (September 10 - November 13, 2010)
Haunch of Venison presents Yoko Ono with the fundamentally new installation 'The Gift' from September 10th to November 13th, 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono is considered a pioneer of conceptual art. 'The Gift' consists of films, sound recordings, sculptures and participatory elements and was conceived specifically for the exhibition at 'Haunch of Venison'.
Ono began to engage with conceptual art and participatory art in the 1950s. The exhibition in Berlin is based on her conceptual work Grapefruit, a collection of ideas for performances in book form, which was created in 1964. Ono deals with the themes of violence, healing, change and love using very different means and questions the dichotomy of the personal and the global.
The work 'A Hole', a fragile yet brutal-seeming sculpture that forms a focal point of the exhibition, consists of a glass front with a star-shaped bullet hole in the middle. Engraved into the glass is an instruction: “Go to the other side of the glass pane and look through the hole.” Ono's instruction calls for you to take on both perspectives, that of the aggressor and that of the victim, and thus take two opposite points of view.
Yoko Ono says of her exhibition: “I want to point out the violence that is happening all over the world. I ask people who come to the exhibition to bring with them a testimony of a personal experience of violence, for example a photo or a text, to be hung on the wall. On the upper floor of the gallery, however, there will be a room where you can simply smile.” The visitors' smiles will be recorded on video and projected in the exhibition room.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. She grew up in Japan and New York and attended Sarah Lawrence College. Ono is considered one of the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. Her work focuses primarily on performance and conceptual art, as well as experimental film and music. Her most important works include the conceptual work Cut Piece and her book Grapefruit (both 1964). - Ono lives and works in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Since its founding in London in 2002, the Haunch of Venison gallery has presented a broad and critically acclaimed exhibition program with some outstanding representatives of contemporary art in London, Berlin and New York. The Berlin branch was opened in September 2007.
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Zur Ausstellung DAS GIFT / About the exhibition THE POISON
"Mein neuestes Installationskunstwerk, DAS GIFT, bittet um Ihre Teilnahme, um die Welt von Gewalt zu heilen." - YOKO ONO
"My latest installation artwork, THE POISON, asks for your participation to heal the world of violence." - YOKO ONO
***** Erste Etage / First Floor *****
HELME (STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL) / HELMETS (PIECES OF SKY)
Alte deutsche Helme aus den letzten Kriegen sind hier und bilden einen eigenen seltsamen Wald mit STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL in jedem von ihnen. - Nimm ein Stück Himmel mit nach Hause.
Old German helmets from the last wars are here, creating a strange forest of their own, with PIECES OF SKY in each one of them. - Take home a piece of sky.
SCHATTEN / SHADOWS
Drei Realitätsebenen werden gleichzeitig gezeigt, indem sie sich gegenseitig überlagern und zu einer Realität werden. Die erste Ebene ist das, was in der Welt geschieht. Die zweite Schicht sind die Menschen, die Schatten sind. Die dritte Schicht bist DU, der steht, geht und die beiden Schichten beobachtet und Teil dieser Realität wird.
Three layers of reality are being shown simultaneously, by overlapping each other and becoming one reality. The first layer is what is happening in the world. The second layer is people who are shadows. The third layer is YOU, standing, walking and observing the two layers and becoming part of this reality.
HEIL / HEAL
Eine große Leinwand mit Rissen und Schnitten auf der Leinwand. Sie sind eingeladen, sich am Flicken der Risse und Schnitte zu beteiligen. Denken Sie daran, dass Sie sich selbst und die Welt flicken, während Sie sie flicken.
A large canvas with rips and cuts in the canvas. You are invited to take part in the mending the rips and cuts. Think that you are mending yourself and the world, as you mend.
EIN LOCH / A HOLE
Es ist ein Werk, bei dem man zweimal die Position wechseln muss, um es zu betrachten. Einmal von vorne, um sich selbst als Schütze zu sehen. Einmal von hinten, um sich selbst als denjenigen zu sehen, auf den geschossen wird.
It is a work which asks you to change your position twice to observe it. Once from the front to see yourself as the shooter. Once from the back to see yourself as the one being shot.
MANTEL / COATS
Ganz am Ende des Raumes hängen sieben Mäntel in einer Reihe, die alle den Personen gehören, die sie trugen, als sie aus nächster Nähe erschossen wurden. Gehen Sie durch die sieben Mäntel, um Ihren Schatten mit dem der anderen zu vermischen.
Seven coats hang at the very end of the room in a row, all belonging to people who were wearing the coats when they were shot point blank from close range. Walk through the seven coats to mix your shadows with theirs.
DER SCHREI / SCREAM
Ein Schrei durchschneidet den riesigen Raum, der mit Gewalt aus allen Ecken der Welt gefüllt ist. Es ist die Stimme der Seevögel namens Kittiwakes aus Gateshead in England. Die Geräusche der Kittiwakes sollen der Klang der "Seelen der verlorenen Kinder" sein. Dann hört man die Krähen und Zikaden aus Tokio zusammen schreien.
A scream cuts through the huge room filled with violence from all corners of the world. It’s a voice of the sea birds called Kittiwakes from Gateshead in England. The sounds of Kittiwakes are said to be the sound of the “The Souls of Lost Children.” Then you hear the crows and cicadas from Tokyo screaming together.
TAUSENDFÜSSLER / CENTIPEDES
Als Sie aufschauen, um den SCHREI zu hören, bemerken Sie riesige Tausendfüßler, die an der Wand krabbeln, und die Tatsache, dass die Größe aller Ereignisse im Raum im Verhältnis zu den Tausendfüßlern verschwindend gering ist. - Da wird Ihnen klar, dass der Raum, den Sie für die Weltkarte hielten, nur ein dunkles KELLERGESCHOSS DES TAUSENDFÜSSLERS war.
As you look up to listen to the SCREAM, you notice huge centipedes crawling on the wall, and the fact that the sizes of all happenings in the room are infintessimal in proportion to the centipedes. - You realize then that the room which you thought of as the Map of the World was only a darkish BASEMENT OF CENTIPEDES.
PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT / THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT
Ganz am Ende des ersten Stocks gibt es einen kleinen Raum mit dem Titel PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT, der aus drei Veranstaltungen besteht.
There is a small room at the very end of the first floor called THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT consisting of three events.
Das erste Werk trägt den Titel: / The first work is titled:
ERINNERTE GEWALT / MEMORY OF VIOLENCE
Neun Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin sind an der Wand zu sehen. Es sind Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin aus verschiedenen Epochen, der erste stammt aus dem Jahr 1890. - Sie werden gebeten, Ihre persönlichen Erinnerungen an Gewalt mitzubringen, wenn Sie DAS GIFT betreten.
Sie können sich an GEDENKEN DER GEWALT beteiligen, indem Sie ein Foto, einen Brief und/oder etwas Geschriebenes mitbringen und es an die Leinwände in der Zeit und an dem Ort in den Karten anheften, wo es Ihrer Meinung nach hingehört - vielleicht an einem Ort, an dem Sie einst gelebt haben, an dem Ihre Familie einst lebte oder an dem Sie eine besondere Erinnerung haben, die Sie mit uns teilen möchten. Da immer mehr Erinnerungen an Gewalt zu den Leinwänden hinzugefügt werden, ist es möglich, dass Ihre Erinnerung von den Erinnerungen anderer überdeckt wird.
Nine canvasses of maps of Berlin are on the wall. They are canvases of street maps of Berlin from different periods, the first one being from 1890. - You are asked to bring your personal memories of violence when you enter DAS GIFT.
You can participate in MEMORY OF VIOLENCE by bringing a photograph, a letter, and/or something you have written, and pinning them onto the canvases in the period and the place in the maps you feel they belong – perhaps in a location where you once lived, or where your family once lived, or where you have a particular memory you wish to share with us. As more and more memories of violence are added to the canvases, it’s possible that your memory may be covered by memories of others.
Das zweite Werk von DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT ist
The second work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
SAMEN / SEEDS
Auf dem Boden dieses Raumes DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT liegen Mullkugeln mit Grapefruitkernen darin. - Sie sind eingeladen, immer mehr Gaze um diese Kerne zu wickeln, bis die Kugeln so groß werden, dass sie nicht mehr aus dem Raum herauskommen.
Balls made of gauze with grapefruit seeds in them are on the floor of this room THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT. - You are invited to continue to wrap more gauze around these seeds until the balls become so large that they cannot get out of the room.
Das dritte Werk von THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT ist
The third work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
ZERSCHLAGENES KRISTALL / SHATTERED GLASS
Fegen Sie den Raum mit einem Besen.
Sweep the room with a broom.
***** Zweite Etage / Second Floor *****
Der letzte Raum der Ausstellung, der sich direkt über dem GEDÄCHTNIS DER GEWALT befindet, ist…
The last room in the show, which is a room right above the MEMORY OF VIOLENCE, is…
BERLINER LÄCHELN / BERLIN SMILE
Setzen Sie sich auf den dafür vorgesehenen Stuhl vor die Kamera und schenken Sie der Welt Ihr Lächeln aus Berlin. Ihr Lächeln wird sich zu anderen Lächeln aus anderen Städten und Ländern gesellen, indem es ins Internet gestellt und in meinem Archiv aufbewahrt wird, damit es bei jeder Gelegenheit gezeigt werden kann. Es ist eine Petition für den Frieden.
Sit on the designated chair in front of the camera, and give your smile to the world from Berlin. Your smile will join other smiles from other cities and countries, by being sent out on the internet, and being also preserved in my archive to be shown whenever there is a chance. It is a petition for peace.
(for English scroll down)
Eröffnung: 10. September 2010, 18:00 - 21:00 Uhr, Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (10. September - 13. November 2010)
Haunch of Venison präsentiert Yoko Ono mit der grundlegend neuen Installation ‚Das Gift‘ vom 10. September bis zum 13. November 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono gilt als Pionierin der Konzeptkunst. ‚Das Gift‘ besteht aus Filmen, Tonaufnahmen, Skulpturen und partizipativen Elementen und wurde eigens für die Ausstellung bei ‚Haunch of Venison‘ konzipiert.
Ono begann in den 1950er Jahren sich mit Konzeptkunst und partizipativer Kunst auseinander zu setzen. Ihre konzeptuelle Arbeit Grapefruit, eine Ideensammlung für Performances in Buchform, die 1964 entstand, liegt der Ausstellung in Berlin zugrunde. Ono behandelt die Themen Gewalt, Heilung, Veränderung oder Liebe mit sehr unterschiedlichen Mitteln und hinterfragt die Dichotomie von Persönlichem und Globalem.
Die Arbeit ‚A Hole‘, eine zugleich fragile, aber auch brutal anmutende Skulptur, welche einen Schwerpunkt in der Ausstellung bildet, besteht aus einer Glasfront, in deren Mitte ein sternförmiges Einschussloch prangt. Ins Glas eingraviert ist eine Aufforderung: „Gehen Sie auf die andere Seite der Glasscheibe und blicken Sie durch das Loch.“ Onos Anweisung fordert auf, beide Perspektiven, die des Aggressors sowie die des Opfers, einzunehmen, und somit zwei entgegengesetzte Standpunkte zu beziehen.
Yoko Ono sagt zu ihrer Ausstellung: „Ich will auf die Gewalt hinweisen, die überall in der Welt passiert. Ich bitte die Menschen, die in die Ausstellung kommen, ein Zeugnis einer persönlichen Gewalterfahrung mitzubringen, beispielsweise ein Foto oder einen Text, die an der Wand angebracht werden sollen. Im Obergeschoss der Galerie wird es hingegen einen Raum geben, in dem man einfach lächeln soll.“ Das Lächeln der Besucher wird auf Video aufgenommen und im Ausstellungsraum projiziert.
Yoko Ono wurde 1933 in Tokio geboren. Sie wuchs in Japan und New York auf und besuchte das Sarah Lawrence College. Ono gilt als eine der bedeutendsten Vertreterinnen der Fluxus-Bewegung der 1960er Jahre. In ihrer Arbeit konzentriert sie sich hauptsächlich auf Performance und Konzeptkunst, wie auch experimentellen Film und Musik. Zu ihren wichtigsten Arbeiten werden die Konzeptarbeit Cut Piece und ihr Buch Grapefruit gezählt (beide 1964). - Ono lebt und arbeitet in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Seit ihrer Gründung im Jahre 2002 in London präsentiert die Galerie Haunch of Venison in London, Berlin und New York ein breites und von Kritikern viel beachtetes Ausstellungsprogramm mit einigen herausragenden Vertretern zeitgenössischer Kunst. Die Berliner Dependance wurde im September 2007 eröffnet.
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THE POISON - Yoko Ono Exhibition, Berlin 2010
Opening: September 10, 2010, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m., Heidestrasse 46, 10557 Berlin (September 10 - November 13, 2010)
Haunch of Venison presents Yoko Ono with the fundamentally new installation 'The Gift' from September 10th to November 13th, 2010 in Berlin.
Yoko Ono is considered a pioneer of conceptual art. 'The Gift' consists of films, sound recordings, sculptures and participatory elements and was conceived specifically for the exhibition at 'Haunch of Venison'.
Ono began to engage with conceptual art and participatory art in the 1950s. The exhibition in Berlin is based on her conceptual work Grapefruit, a collection of ideas for performances in book form, which was created in 1964. Ono deals with the themes of violence, healing, change and love using very different means and questions the dichotomy of the personal and the global.
The work 'A Hole', a fragile yet brutal-seeming sculpture that forms a focal point of the exhibition, consists of a glass front with a star-shaped bullet hole in the middle. Engraved into the glass is an instruction: “Go to the other side of the glass pane and look through the hole.” Ono's instruction calls for you to take on both perspectives, that of the aggressor and that of the victim, and thus take two opposite points of view.
Yoko Ono says of her exhibition: “I want to point out the violence that is happening all over the world. I ask people who come to the exhibition to bring with them a testimony of a personal experience of violence, for example a photo or a text, to be hung on the wall. On the upper floor of the gallery, however, there will be a room where you can simply smile.” The visitors' smiles will be recorded on video and projected in the exhibition room.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. She grew up in Japan and New York and attended Sarah Lawrence College. Ono is considered one of the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. Her work focuses primarily on performance and conceptual art, as well as experimental film and music. Her most important works include the conceptual work Cut Piece and her book Grapefruit (both 1964). - Ono lives and works in New York.
Haunch Of Venison
Since its founding in London in 2002, the Haunch of Venison gallery has presented a broad and critically acclaimed exhibition program with some outstanding representatives of contemporary art in London, Berlin and New York. The Berlin branch was opened in September 2007.
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Zur Ausstellung DAS GIFT / About the exhibition THE POISON
"Mein neuestes Installationskunstwerk, DAS GIFT, bittet um Ihre Teilnahme, um die Welt von Gewalt zu heilen." - YOKO ONO
"My latest installation artwork, THE POISON, asks for your participation to heal the world of violence." - YOKO ONO
***** Erste Etage / First Floor *****
HELME (STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL) / HELMETS (PIECES OF SKY)
Alte deutsche Helme aus den letzten Kriegen sind hier und bilden einen eigenen seltsamen Wald mit STÜCKE VOM HIMMEL in jedem von ihnen. - Nimm ein Stück Himmel mit nach Hause.
Old German helmets from the last wars are here, creating a strange forest of their own, with PIECES OF SKY in each one of them. - Take home a piece of sky.
SCHATTEN / SHADOWS
Drei Realitätsebenen werden gleichzeitig gezeigt, indem sie sich gegenseitig überlagern und zu einer Realität werden. Die erste Ebene ist das, was in der Welt geschieht. Die zweite Schicht sind die Menschen, die Schatten sind. Die dritte Schicht bist DU, der steht, geht und die beiden Schichten beobachtet und Teil dieser Realität wird.
Three layers of reality are being shown simultaneously, by overlapping each other and becoming one reality. The first layer is what is happening in the world. The second layer is people who are shadows. The third layer is YOU, standing, walking and observing the two layers and becoming part of this reality.
HEIL / HEAL
Eine große Leinwand mit Rissen und Schnitten auf der Leinwand. Sie sind eingeladen, sich am Flicken der Risse und Schnitte zu beteiligen. Denken Sie daran, dass Sie sich selbst und die Welt flicken, während Sie sie flicken.
A large canvas with rips and cuts in the canvas. You are invited to take part in the mending the rips and cuts. Think that you are mending yourself and the world, as you mend.
EIN LOCH / A HOLE
Es ist ein Werk, bei dem man zweimal die Position wechseln muss, um es zu betrachten. Einmal von vorne, um sich selbst als Schütze zu sehen. Einmal von hinten, um sich selbst als denjenigen zu sehen, auf den geschossen wird.
It is a work which asks you to change your position twice to observe it. Once from the front to see yourself as the shooter. Once from the back to see yourself as the one being shot.
MANTEL / COATS
Ganz am Ende des Raumes hängen sieben Mäntel in einer Reihe, die alle den Personen gehören, die sie trugen, als sie aus nächster Nähe erschossen wurden. Gehen Sie durch die sieben Mäntel, um Ihren Schatten mit dem der anderen zu vermischen.
Seven coats hang at the very end of the room in a row, all belonging to people who were wearing the coats when they were shot point blank from close range. Walk through the seven coats to mix your shadows with theirs.
DER SCHREI / SCREAM
Ein Schrei durchschneidet den riesigen Raum, der mit Gewalt aus allen Ecken der Welt gefüllt ist. Es ist die Stimme der Seevögel namens Kittiwakes aus Gateshead in England. Die Geräusche der Kittiwakes sollen der Klang der "Seelen der verlorenen Kinder" sein. Dann hört man die Krähen und Zikaden aus Tokio zusammen schreien.
A scream cuts through the huge room filled with violence from all corners of the world. It’s a voice of the sea birds called Kittiwakes from Gateshead in England. The sounds of Kittiwakes are said to be the sound of the “The Souls of Lost Children.” Then you hear the crows and cicadas from Tokyo screaming together.
TAUSENDFÜSSLER / CENTIPEDES
Als Sie aufschauen, um den SCHREI zu hören, bemerken Sie riesige Tausendfüßler, die an der Wand krabbeln, und die Tatsache, dass die Größe aller Ereignisse im Raum im Verhältnis zu den Tausendfüßlern verschwindend gering ist. - Da wird Ihnen klar, dass der Raum, den Sie für die Weltkarte hielten, nur ein dunkles KELLERGESCHOSS DES TAUSENDFÜSSLERS war.
As you look up to listen to the SCREAM, you notice huge centipedes crawling on the wall, and the fact that the sizes of all happenings in the room are infintessimal in proportion to the centipedes. - You realize then that the room which you thought of as the Map of the World was only a darkish BASEMENT OF CENTIPEDES.
PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT / THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT
Ganz am Ende des ersten Stocks gibt es einen kleinen Raum mit dem Titel PASSAGEN FÜR LICHT, der aus drei Veranstaltungen besteht.
There is a small room at the very end of the first floor called THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT consisting of three events.
Das erste Werk trägt den Titel: / The first work is titled:
ERINNERTE GEWALT / MEMORY OF VIOLENCE
Neun Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin sind an der Wand zu sehen. Es sind Leinwände mit Stadtplänen von Berlin aus verschiedenen Epochen, der erste stammt aus dem Jahr 1890. - Sie werden gebeten, Ihre persönlichen Erinnerungen an Gewalt mitzubringen, wenn Sie DAS GIFT betreten.
Sie können sich an GEDENKEN DER GEWALT beteiligen, indem Sie ein Foto, einen Brief und/oder etwas Geschriebenes mitbringen und es an die Leinwände in der Zeit und an dem Ort in den Karten anheften, wo es Ihrer Meinung nach hingehört - vielleicht an einem Ort, an dem Sie einst gelebt haben, an dem Ihre Familie einst lebte oder an dem Sie eine besondere Erinnerung haben, die Sie mit uns teilen möchten. Da immer mehr Erinnerungen an Gewalt zu den Leinwänden hinzugefügt werden, ist es möglich, dass Ihre Erinnerung von den Erinnerungen anderer überdeckt wird.
Nine canvasses of maps of Berlin are on the wall. They are canvases of street maps of Berlin from different periods, the first one being from 1890. - You are asked to bring your personal memories of violence when you enter DAS GIFT.
You can participate in MEMORY OF VIOLENCE by bringing a photograph, a letter, and/or something you have written, and pinning them onto the canvases in the period and the place in the maps you feel they belong – perhaps in a location where you once lived, or where your family once lived, or where you have a particular memory you wish to share with us. As more and more memories of violence are added to the canvases, it’s possible that your memory may be covered by memories of others.
Das zweite Werk von DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT ist
The second work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
SAMEN / SEEDS
Auf dem Boden dieses Raumes DIE PASSAGE FÜR LICHT liegen Mullkugeln mit Grapefruitkernen darin. - Sie sind eingeladen, immer mehr Gaze um diese Kerne zu wickeln, bis die Kugeln so groß werden, dass sie nicht mehr aus dem Raum herauskommen.
Balls made of gauze with grapefruit seeds in them are on the floor of this room THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT. - You are invited to continue to wrap more gauze around these seeds until the balls become so large that they cannot get out of the room.
Das dritte Werk von THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT ist
The third work in THE PASSAGE FOR LIGHT is
ZERSCHLAGENES KRISTALL / SHATTERED GLASS
Fegen Sie den Raum mit einem Besen.
Sweep the room with a broom.
***** Zweite Etage / Second Floor *****
Der letzte Raum der Ausstellung, der sich direkt über dem GEDÄCHTNIS DER GEWALT befindet, ist…
The last room in the show, which is a room right above the MEMORY OF VIOLENCE, is…
BERLINER LÄCHELN / BERLIN SMILE
Setzen Sie sich auf den dafür vorgesehenen Stuhl vor die Kamera und schenken Sie der Welt Ihr Lächeln aus Berlin. Ihr Lächeln wird sich zu anderen Lächeln aus anderen Städten und Ländern gesellen, indem es ins Internet gestellt und in meinem Archiv aufbewahrt wird, damit es bei jeder Gelegenheit gezeigt werden kann. Es ist eine Petition für den Frieden.
Sit on the designated chair in front of the camera, and give your smile to the world from Berlin. Your smile will join other smiles from other cities and countries, by being sent out on the internet, and being also preserved in my archive to be shown whenever there is a chance. It is a petition for peace.
On 15 June 1968, John Lennon & I planted two acorns for peace at Coventry Cathedral. It was the first of our many Peace 'Events'.
Photo by Keith Macmillan
開学10周年記念国際展覧会 オノ・ヨーコ『BELL OF PEACE 平和の鐘』展
期間：2008年10月20日（月）～2009年1月25日（日）
"Ring the Bell of Peace in your mind." ～あなたの心の平和の鐘を鳴らしてください～
BELL PIECE
Listen to a bell for an hour.
Diminish the sound to piano
by ringing it over in your head.
Diminish the sound to pianissimo
by ringing it over in your dream.
Diminish the sound of poco a poco
troppo pianissimo by forgetting.
Try other sounds
i.e., mother’s voice
baby cry
husband’s hysterics
1963 autumn
We're Here! making Art Parody.
Yoko Ono. Like many people, I became aware of her because of her relationship with John Lennon. But, she was already and always more complex than just the wife of a Beatle. As a conceptual artist, she often produced instructions and performances that seemed meaningless; but "A Hole to See the Sky Through" is the one I remember the most and has influenced me the most. We have something blocking our view, and we need a hole in it to see through to the other side.
Here, I have three holes, the better to see in 3D vision, and with the visions of our inner third eye.
The LennonOno Grant for Peace was created by Yoko Ono Lennon to honour her late husband John Lennon’s dedication to peace and commitment to the preservation of human rights.
Created in 2002, this biennial award has always been given to two recipients.
To mark this special anniversary year, Yoko Ono presented this award to four recipients who have been selected based on their courage and commitment to peace, truth and human rights.
The recipients are:
Filmmaker Josh Fox wrote and directed the documentary feature film Gasland in 2010. Josh’s work is known for its mix of gripping narrative, heightened imagery and its commitment to socially conscious themes and subjects.
Barbara Kowalcyk was propelled into food safety advocacy in 2001, when her two-year-old son, Kevin, died after suffering an E.coli infection from tainted food. Barbara and her mother Patricia Buck created the Center for Foodborne Illness & Prevention (CFI) a national non-profit organization committed to improving public health by preventing foodborne illness through research, education, advocacy and service.
Author Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment. He is the author of numerous best sellers, most recently Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.
Author, poet, and activist Alice Walker is known for her brave stance against racism, sexism, and human rights issues. In 2009, she traveled to Gaza along with a group of 60 other female activists from the anti-war group Code Pink to oppose the controversial blockade and violence against Gaza by Israel and Egypt. Her book Overcoming Speechlessness documents her experiences in Gaza and abroad.
PART 3 THE LOST WEEKEND
In 1972 ,the night McGovern lost the election, John and I were invited to a party at Jerry Rubin's apartment in the Village. It was a gathering of New York liberal intellectuals, some artists, musicians and many journalists. John became totally drunk and pulled a woman into the next room and started to make love. Nobody could leave the party because all the coats were in that room. We were all sitting there trying to ignore what was happening. The wall was paper thin and you could hear the noise, which was incredibly loud. A considerate musician put a Dylan record on to offset the sound. But that did not drown out the sound coming from "the room." In the middle of all this, a New York celeb woman chose to make conversation with me. "I don't know how you feel about him... but we love him. He and his friends... what they did... but especially John... we all respect him tremendously. He's a great man... he is a wonderful man..." It was something like that she kept repeating to me, with an angry look as if to blame me for not rejoicing for what was happening in that room. Then there was a long silence. Some woman quietly went into the room to retrieve her coat. Others followed. When John finally came out of the room, he said, later, that he had never seen me looking so pale. "I could never forget that face," he used to say for a long while.
Something was lost that night for me. Living with John was a very trying situation. But I thought I would endure all that for our love. I used to think that our love was a secret thing between us, so it didn't matter what people said... let them. Our love was higher than the highest sky, and deeper than the deepest water. But was it? Now it seemed that there were some clouds I hand 't noticed and the water looked murky after the splash. Jerry thought it was terrible that I couldn't "forgive" John. McGovern lost. All of us were totally devastated. You can imagine how John felt about it. It was a real blow to us. So he was drunk, for heaven's sake!" "It's not a matter of forgiving him or not forgiving him. I would not use that word. It's more like I can't 'forget' what happened. Call me a prude, but it just hit me in the wrong way." Inside, I felt like a shattered raggedy doll.
This was the prelude to the famous "Lost Weekend". The United States Government was trying to kick us out of the country because of our political stand. John and I had pretty much burned our bridge to England, with John marrying an oriental, returning the MBE to the Queen, and being arrested for possession of drugs, though the drug had been planted. My daughter had been kidnapped by my ex-husband, I became a dragon lady in the eyes of the public, and I lost my platform to express myself as an artist. The tension was compounded by nets of intrigues spun around us by sources which were sometimes not too clear. Yet. we thought nothing was more important than how we felt about each other. We can make it. We're making it. Yes, it's alright! But that night made me think. It took almost another whole year for me to decide on what to do, and I did. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary solutions.
There was no fight or anything. We were having a warm conversation in the afternoon in our bed. I told John that I thought a trial separation would be a good idea. "We're both still young and attractive, it's crazy to stay together just because we're married. I would hate that. That's not what we were about, was it? We should see what happens..." I tried to make light of it. "What about L.A.? I remember you telling me how you had fun on a Beatle tour..." - that sort of thing. "Okay, but I don't want to lose you", John said. "We'd probably lose each other if we stayed", I said. I didn't tell this to John, but I thought I would lose him. Hey, it's John Lennon. It was obvious to everybody, except to John, that I was the loser. Every man and woman of our generation was going to be happy that finally I was not around their hero.
John was incredibly ecstatic for four days. He called me to thank me. "Yoko, you're incredible. This is great! Thank you!" There was no sarcasm there. I was glad that he was happy. After four days he called me with a totally different voice, "I've had enough. I want to come home." I laughed it off. It was too soon.
Alone, I started to do my work again. Charlotte Moorman greeted me by saying, "Welcome home, genius!" That made me feel good. I knew her from way back. But in 1974, she was already a very famous figure in the avant-garde music scene. "Why are you wasting your talent, Yoko? Just forget about those horrible people. You must immediately start working. I want to put your new work in this year's Avant-Garde Festival... This year, it's going to be in Shea Stadium... Oh, dear, what am I saying?" We laughed. My old friends, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsburg and Ornette Coleman took me around a lot. I met William Burroughs through Allen. It was very different from the Rock Scene. I was a person again, not a dragon lady. A young gallery owner told me that he wanted to include me in his Contemporary Art Show. I thought it was nice that he asked, and I put a piece in the show. One day the gallery owner came to me and asked if I was going to the Madison Square Garden show that night. "What show?" "You don't know? I thought you would be going, and if you were I was hoping that you would take me with you." It turned out that Elton John and John Lennon were doing the show. "Oh, I don't know..." Obviously, l wasn't too keen on going. "Let me think about it." I asked my secretary to simply send a gardenia each to Elton and John with a note saying congrats or whatever. But the gallery owner did not let go of the idea of going to the show. "Oh, come on, Yoko. please go." So at the last minute, I decided to go as a favour to this guy. It was Elton's show. and John came out at the end as a surprise guest. People were so excited that the whole Garden was shaking. I looked at him and tears ran down my cheek. He was looking lonely. He was looking scared. He bowed once too often. This was not the John I knew. When he was with me, he wasn't afraid of anything. I couldn't stop crying. Everybody else was ecstatic. After the show, the gallery owner said, "Aren't you going to take me backstage?" I thought, "Oh, give me a break!" But I took him. John couldn't believe his eyes. We looked at each other for the longest time. We were saying nothings to each other, but we knew what it was. We couldn't take our eyes off each other. It was terrible. Oh, God. please don't do this to me. again. I said to myself. I want a life, remember? "You're looking very good." John said, trying to sound cool. That's how we came back together again.
In hindsight. I'm glad that John had his "boys room" stuff - before he passed away. Who was to know that he didn't have very much time left to enjoy life? I remember John's happy voice "Thank you. Yoko...", even if it was for four days... and I'm sure it wasn't.
Yoko Ono Lennon NYC 1998
Illustration "The Hole Of My Life" by John Lennon, colored by Yoko Ono Lennon.
from John Lennon Anthology CD box set booklet.
by Yoko Ono
Performed by Yoko Ono on July 20, 1964
at Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan.
Photographer unknown;
courtesy Lenono Photo Archive.
YOKO ONO’S CUT PIECE From Text to Performance and Back Again
by Kevin Concannon
Art is inexorably bound up in the situation where it is
produced and where it is experienced. You can emphasize this,
or you can emphasize where it is produced or experienced: you
can even equate them, and emphasize the equation. The
relationship exists in any case, and, either as artist or as
audience, we are in a situation analogous to a swimmer who
may fight the surf, dive through it and struggle against it
until he gets out beyond where the surf is noticeable: or
else this swimmer can roll with the waves.
Dick Higgins, Postface (1964) [1]
The seemingly sudden and recent popularity of reprise
performances of live artworks of the 1960s and 1970s has been
greeted with an equally abundant supply of critical analysis,
much of which frames these events as “reenactments.” Such is
the case with Yoko Ono’s 2003 performance of her 1964 Cut
Piece. It was performed by Ono on at least six occasions and
by others many times more. The first two performances took
place in Kyoto and Tokyo in July and August 1964. The third
performance was presented at Carnegie Recital Hall in New
York City in March 1965. And the fourth and fifth
performances were offered as part of the Destruction in Art
Symposium presentation of Two Evenings with Yoko Ono at the
Africa Centre in London in September 1966. While Ono
“directed” later performances of the work, these were - until
September 2003 - the only confirmed occasions on which she
herself publicly performed it.
In these first performances by Ono, the artist sat kneeling
on the concert hall stage, wearing her best suit of clothing,
with a pair of scissors placed on the floor in front of her.
Members of the audience were invited to approach the stage,
one at a time, and cut a bit of her clothes off - which they
were allowed to keep. The score for Cut Piece appears, along
with those for several other works, in a document from
January 1966 called Strip Tease Show.
Cut Piece First version for single performer:
Performer sits on stage with a pair of scissors in front of him.
It is announced that members of the audience may come on stage
- one at a time - to cut a small piece of the performer’s
clothing to take with them.
Performer remains motionless throughout the piece.
Piece ends at the performer’s option.
Second version for audience:
It is announced that members of the audience may cut each other’s
clothing.
The audience may cut as long as they wish.
And in the 1971 paperback edition of her book, Grapefruit,
Ono included not so much a score as a description, concluding
with the statement that, “the performer, however, does not
have to be a woman.”
In her catalogue essay for the 2005 exhibition, Life, Once
More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, Jennifer
Allen characterizes Ono’s 2003 performance of Cut Piece as a
“reenactment,” and imputes to the artist rather grand
ambitions for the event.
In September 2003 at Paris’s Ranelagh Theatre, Yoko Ono
reenacted her own Cut Piece as an expression of her hope for
world peace…. One could argue that the original performances
of the sixties and seventies needed to be reenacted in order
to catch up with the spectacle, in order to be reproduced, in
order to exist. Ono’s intervention seems to differ since she
decided to reenact Cut Piece, not for an exhibition, but for
the mass media, and not merely to ensure the continued
existence of her work, but in order to make a difference in
the present. In France, the organizers placed a full - page
advert for the event with a statement by Ono who described
her intervention as a response to the political changes in
the wake of 9/11. Her statement appeared around the world for
a little bit longer than fifteen minutes. It seems that Ono
hoped that her performance would reenact the peace movement
of the sixties on a global scale. In this case, the
reenactment searched for a lost totality, not in the
performance, but in an entire generation. [2]
There are a number of problems with this assessment. Most
importantly, the very notion that Ono reenacted her own work
seems to miss the point of an event score entirely. In the
two score variations quoted above, Ono refers to the
performer in the third person - and makes it clear that the
performer may be either male or female. Thus there is no
sense of an “original” performance - or any sense of priority
for the artist’s own performances - even after the fact. The
texts are not so much documents of a singular performance as
the performances are realizations of the score. And whether
these realizations are made by the artist herself or another
performer - or whether they are made in 1964 or 2007 - makes
little difference in this regard. While Allen suggests that
performances of the sixties and seventies might be reenacted
“in order to be reproduced, in order to exist,” she seems to
recognize that there is more than this behind Ono’s 2003
performance when she notes that Ono mounted her Paris
performance “not merely to ensure the continued existence of
her work, but in order to make a difference in the present.”
Having conceived Cut Piece as an event score, Ono foresaw the
work’s realization in a succession of presents. And from the
start, she understood that in each of these presents the work
would be transformed - not from any authentic original, but
from an idea into an experience - each one distinct from the
others. Ono has described her instruction works - or scores - as
“seeds,” activated individually and collectively in the minds
and actions of those who receive them. And as is often the
case with her work, this germinating idea is manifest in
multiple variations.
At earlier performances of Cut Piece, Ono has discussed the
work in several different ways. As will be clarified below,
she has characterized it as a test of her commitment to life
as an artist, as a challenge to artistic ego, as a gift, and
as a spiritual act. Critics over the years have interpreted
Cut Piece as a striptease, a protest against violence and
against war (specifically the Vietnam War), and most recently
(and most frequently) as a feminist work. In September 2003,
at the age of seventy, Ono performed Cut Piece in Paris “for
world peace.” Thirty - nine years after her first performance
of the work, she told Reuters News Agency that she did it
“against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against
violence.” Although neither Ono nor her critics framed Cut
Piece as a feminist work in the 1960s when she was first
performing it, she has clearly subsumed the subsequent
feminist interpretations of her piece into her own revised
intention all these years later.
John Lennon noted on more than one occasion that Ono was “the
world’s most famous unknown artist.” Although Ono had already
established a fairly substantial reputation in London by the
time she first met Lennon in November 1966, her subsequent
liaison with the married Beatle soon eclipsed her growing
reputation as a prominent avant - garde artist. And after
marrying Lennon she became “the woman who broke up the
Beatles,” and consequently an object of scorn in the
worldwide press. In addition to losing her artistic identity
(in the popular press) and being labeled a homewrecker, Ono
bore the brunt of an onslaught of racism and sexism that is
still hard to fathom thirty - odd years later. It is hardly
surprising then that she now offers her performance against
racism and against sexism. And, having last performed it in
the eighth decade of her life, ageism has become part of her
personal experience as well. To borrow Higgins’s metaphor,
she is rolling with the waves (or perhaps the punches).
In recent years, even before the current vogue for
“reenactment,” Ono’s work has become an increasingly popular
subject of art - historical reclamation, culminating in the
recent retrospective exhibition and book, Yes Yoko Ono. Since
her reemergence onto the art scene (having been virtually
ignored by the artworld during her years with Lennon) with a
small exhibition of bronzes at the Whitney Museum in 1989,
the majority of authors who have considered her work as a
visual artist (or a recording artist, for that matter) have
presented her work as “proto - feminist,” typically citing Cut
Piece, as a major example from the sixties. The act of art
historical description and interpretation is a form of
“reenactment” as well, of course. Allen’s contention that
performances might be reenacted “to catch up with the
spectacle, in order to be reproduced, in order to exist,”
seems to imply that the “event” of the performance is a
“media event” of sorts - prompting the consequential press (or
art - historical literature) as its objective. In the case of
the performance reenactments of which she writes, however, it
seems more likely that it is exactly the other way around.
That is, it is the art - historical attention that prompts the
“reenactments.”
While Ono’s own earlier discussions of the work’s inspiration
and “meaning” certainly accommodate any number of different
readings, the current dominance of feminist
approaches - something the artist herself has clearly accepted
and reinvested into her 2003 performance - or at least her
discussion of it - has had the cumulative effect of recasting
Cut Piece as one - dimensional - and in the process ironically
marginalizing the very work these feminist scholars seek to
reclaim for history - and indeed have. As shall become clear,
the differences between Ono’s own earlier explanations of the
piece and the feminist framings by critics writing since
Ono’s 1989 reemergence are substantial, though certainly not
irreconcilable. These differences can be understood, of
course, in the context of the hermeneutics to which Higgins
alludes in the epigraph. Elsewhere, he has proposed that
hermeneutics is an ideal approach with which to critically
consider Fluxus performances. Paraphrasing Hans - Georg
Gadamer, Higgins explains:
The performer performs the work. He or she establishes a
horizon of experience - what is done, its implications and
whatever style the performer uses are all aspects of this
horizon.
The viewer has his or her own horizon of experience. He or
she watches the performance, and the horizons are matched up
together. To some extent there is a fusion of these horizons
(Horizontverschmelzung). When the horizons fuse, wholly or in
part, they are bent, warped, displaced, altered. The
performance ends, and the horizons are no longer actively
fused. The viewer examines his or her horizon. It is changed,
for the better or for the worse. The best piece is the one
that permanently affects the recipient’s horizon, and the
worst is the piece which the recipient, acting in good faith,
cannot accept at all. [3]
While Ono’s Cut Piece is not necessarily a Fluxus work,
Gadamer’s hermeneutic model is entirely appropriate, as I
will demonstrate below. But first, a review of the work’s
critical reception is in order. My first example raises the
important question of documentation in addition to the
current pervasiveness of the work’s feminist interpretation.
In 1992 artist Lynn Hershman was commissioned to re - document
Cut Piece for European television. Working from photos and
texts, as well as a first - hand account of one of Ono’s
performances that a colleague of hers had seen, Hershman
created a fifteen - minute video documentation of a 1993
performance staged with three actors specifically for this
purpose. Her attempts to interview Ono for the project were
unsuccessful. Cut Piece: A Video Homage to Yoko Ono concludes
with a discussion between art historians Moira Roth and
Whitney Chadwick; the tape had been produced with the
classroom in mind, Hershman told an interviewer in 1993.
One of the most obvious ways in which the video seems to
deviate from the original performance score is in its
splicing together of three performances by three different
women. Hershman saw Cut Piece in terms of “feminism,
violence, and risk” and recreated it with the idea of “video
cutting as a type of violence as well.” When asked why she
chose to present performances by three women, Hershman
replied: “I think she represented everywoman, not just one.”
[4]
Another scene, in which a man from the audience approaches
the stage and raises the scissors in a threatening gesture
(though ultimately lowering his arm and simply cutting her
dress) is based on written accounts of a similar event that
is said to have occurred during the first performance in
Kyoto.
While some of the earlier accounts of Cut Piece performances
refer to the audience’s behavior as sexually aggressive, it
is not until Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt’s 1991
book, Yoko Ono: Objects and Arias, that Cut Piece is given a
specifically feminist reading - and a somewhat qualified
feminist reading at that:
Running through much of Ono’s work is a bold commentary on
women. Yet far from being strident feminist tracts on the
subordination and victimization of women, her pieces achieve
power because of their ambiguity; their willingness to
forfeit the illusion of politically proper thinking throws
responsibility for judgment upon the viewer. [5]
Three years later, though, in Marcia Tanner’s catalogue essay
for the 1994 Bad Girls exhibition, the author calls Cut Piece
“fiercely feminist in content” and explains:
Ono’s inspiration for Cut Piece was the legend of the Buddha,
who had renounced his life of privilege to wander the world,
giving whatever was asked of him. His soul achieved supreme
enlightenment when he allowed a tiger to devour his body, and
Ono saw parallels between the Buddha’s selfless giving and
the artist’s. When addressing serious issues - in this case
voyeurism, sexual aggression, gender subordination, violation
of a woman’s personal space, violence against women - Ono
invariably found means to combine dangerous confrontation
with poetry, spirituality, personal vulnerability, and edgy
laughter. [6]
Within five years, Haskell and Hanhardt’s rather tentative
feminist interpretation had become dominant, cropping up
regularly in the popular press as well. Cut Piece wasn’t
always a feminist statement, however. Cut Piece is an
incredibly rich and poetic work that raises questions about
the nature of the artist - audience relationship, and in so
doing, deliberately offers its performers, audiences, and
critics an opportunity to project their own “meaning” into
the work.
While Ono clearly has no objections to the feminist readings
that currently prevail, her recent comments also suggest that
she understands that “hindsight is twentytwenty.” In 1994
interviewer Robert Enright asked her, while discussing one of
her films, “Did you think of yourself as a proto - feminist?”
She responded: “I didn’t have any notion of feminism. When I
went to London and got together with John that was the
biggest macho scene imaginable. That’s when I made the
statement ‘Woman is the Nigger of the World.’”7 It was 1969
when she made that statement to Nova, a British women’s
magazine. And in 1972 she and Lennon would issue a
controversial pop single of the same title.
Two years earlier, after she had met Lennon, but before she
had “gotten together” with him, she directed a performance of
Cut Piece as part of a “happening.” The 14 Hour Technicolour
Dream Extravaganza at London’s Alexandra Palace in April 1967
was the epitome of swinging London - and the epitome of the
macho scene to which Ono referred. Lennon was in the audience
that night, and the band Pink Floyd was also on the bill. A
film of the event shows Ono’s then - husband, Tony Cox,
presiding over the performance, which featured model Carol
Mann. An enormous crowd presses against Mann, who is perched
on a large stepladder, wearing granny glasses and smoking a
cigarette. In contrast to the solemn air that envelops Ono in
her own performances of Cut Piece, the Alexandra Palace
performance seems a mob scene - a spectacle. While one would be
hard - pressed to present this performance as feminist, Ono
clearly accepted authorship of this performance as
photographs of this event were used in subsequent publicity
for her later concerts.
How, then, did Ono herself talk about Cut Piece when she was
first performing it? Discussing the work in a 1967 article in
a London underground magazine, Ono told her interviewers: It
was a form of giving, giving and taking. It was a kind of
criticism against artists, who are always giving what they
want to give. I wanted people to take whatever they wanted
to, so it was very important to say you can cut wherever you
want to. It is a form of giving that has a lot to do with
Buddhism. There’s a small allegorical story about Buddha. He
left his castle with his wife and children and was walking
towards a mountain to go into meditation. As he was walking
along, a man said that he wanted Buddha’s children because he
wanted to sell them or something. So Buddha gave him his
children. Then someone said he wanted Buddha’s wife and he
gave him his wife. Someone calls that he is cold, so Buddha
gives him his clothes. Finally a tiger comes along and says
he wants to eat him and Buddha lets the tiger eat him. And in
the moment the tiger eats him, it became enlightened or
something. That’s a form of total giving as opposed to
reasonable giving like “logically you deserve this” or “I
think this is good, therefore I am giving this to you.” [8]
This is the very same story alluded to by Bad Girls author
Tanner, above. Yet Tanner characterizes the story as a kind
of poetic spirituality in which Ono cloaked her “serious
issues,” namely feminist issues.
By 1973 Ono was widely considered a “radical feminist.” Only
a year earlier, for example, the record Woman is the Nigger
of the World had been greeted with great controversy in the
mainstream press. Yet in 1974 she discussed Cut Piece at
length in an autobiographical essay written for a Japanese
magazine - with no reference at all to feminist politics.
Traditionally, the artist’s ego is in the artist’s work. In
other words, the artist must give the artist’s ego to the
audience. I had always wanted to produce work without ego in
it. I was thinking of this motif more and more, and the
result of this was Cut Piece.
Instead of giving the audience what the artist chooses to
give, the artist gives what the audience chooses to take.
That is to say, you cut and take whatever part you want; that
was my feeling about its purpose. I went onto the stage
wearing the best suit I had. To think that it would be OK to
use the cheapest clothes because it was going to be cut
anyway would be wrong; it’s against my intentions.
I was poor at the time, and it was hard. This event I
repeated in several different places, and my wardrobe got
smaller and smaller. However, when I sat on stage in front of
the audience, I felt that this was my genuine contribution.
This is how I really felt.
The audience was quiet and still, and I felt that everyone
was holding their breath. While I was doing it, I was staring
into space. I felt kind of like I was praying. I also felt
that I was willingly sacrificing myself. [9]
The idea of giving the audience what it wishes to take is
very much bound up with hermeneutics - or reception theory - the
idea that it is the viewer as much as the artist who invests
a work of art with meaning. Cut Piece’s reception - the meaning
with which it is invested - is as varied as its audiences.
One of the earliest reviews of Cut Piece that I have been
able to find is of Ono’s second performance of the work in
August 1964 in Tokyo. The headline translates as: “The title
is ‘Stripping’ - avant - garde musician, Ono Yoko’s recital.” And
it continues: In the center of the stage without any props,
under the hazy spot light, a woman sits. From their seats,
members of the audience ran up onto the stage and started to
cut off her clothing with scissors. Soon, the scissors cut
even to her underwear. With the theme ‘Stripping,’ it is a
scene from Ono Yoko’s recital held at Sogetsu Art Center the
other day. [10]
After listing the other works performed, it concludes: “Now,
one may say ‘there, the sign of essence was performed’ and
bow down his head, and others may say ‘If no sounds were
made, give me back my money’ and raise their arms in the air.
Anyway, avant - garde music is a mysterious thing.” This
anything - but - feminist reading of Cut Piece in the Japanese
press can perhaps be better understood when one realizes that
another piece on the program, listed in this review as Chair
Piece, was actually titled Strip Tease for Three. It involved
simply a curtain rising to reveal three empty chairs on the
stage and then descending.
In June 1968, however, a similar characterization of Cut
Piece - along with a suite of provocative photographs - was
presented in the pages of TAB, a New York “gentlemen’s
magazine.” With a headline, “The Hippiest Artistic Happening:
‘Step Up and Strip Me Nude,’” the brief article continued:
Though Time magazine called her performance “music of the
mind,” and Art and Artists in London described it as “the
next logical step,” Yoko Ono’s “art” striptease still seems
like a striptease to excited viewers. The difference here is
that Yoko, a Japanese lovely now performing on the continent,
does not take her clothing off . . . the audience does it for
her. Guys who used to sit back and yell “Take it off!” now
have the golden opportunity to take it off for her. [11]
Published only weeks prior to the revelation of Ono’s affair
with Lennon, the author’s characterization of the artist as a
“Japanese lovely” stands in stark contrast to the
descriptions of her as “ugly” that would soon predominate.
A canonically feminist work since the 1990s, Cut Piece began
its life quite differently. But Ono’s aesthetics of reception
accommodate both these readings and many more too numerous to
review in these pages. Interpretations of Cut Piece as a
feminist work and as a striptease are ultimately at least as
revealing of those respective interpreters as they are of the
artist who conceived the work. For if Cut Piece is both these
things and more, it is foremost a work that challenges our
notions of what a work of art is and who actually makes it - a
conceptual work.
Curiously, Cut Piece has received considerably more press in
the past seventeen years than during the three or four years
that Ono initially performed it - all incidentally before her
famous liaison with Lennon. And for the most part, this
expert opinion has been based on previously published
descriptions and photographs. As it turns out, while Ono’s
staff had unknowingly informed artist Lynn Hershman
otherwise, there is a film of the 1965 Carnegie Recital Hall
performance of Cut Piece made by Albert and David Maysles - and
others as well. I discovered this film in late 1996 while
researching a catalogue essay for Ono’s 1996 FLY exhibition
and subsequently found other films as well. While I had
screened it at conferences in 1997, its first major public
showings occurred within the Out of Actions exhibition at
L.A. MoCA in 1998. From this point on, most writers and
performers worked from this film document.
As noted earlier, Ono had always intended Cut Piece to be
performed by men or women. The first documented male
performance of Cut Piece (that I’ve been able to find,
anyway) took place in Central Park on September 9, 1966, as
part of the Fourth Annual Avant - Garde Festival organized by
Charlotte Moorman. Ono had been scheduled to perform Cut
Piece, but left suddenly for London and the Destruction in
Art Symposium. Ono’s performance had already been publicized
though, so Moorman hastily arranged for two men to perform
the piece in Ono’s stead. Apparently facing problems with
nudity and her parks permit, the performers appeared in large
black bags that were cut off instead of their clothing - a
conflation of Ono’s Bag Piece and Cut Piece. For what was in
all likelihood the first male performance of Cut Piece, then,
the performers wore bags, under which they were fully
clothed. Due to specifically stated park policy, nudity was
prohibited.
The next known male solo performance of Cut Piece was in the
fall of 1968, and the performer was Jon Hendricks, then
director of the Judson Gallery, and now Ono’s exhibitions
manager as well as curator of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman
Fluxus Collection. Hendricks was a guest instructor for a
“Semester in New York” program sponsored by a consortium of
Midwest colleges. The students were living at the Paris
Hotel, where the course was taught. Hendricks performed Cut
Piece as part of their introduction to the course.
I was kind of nervous so I decided to do Cut Piece. I bought
a suit at the thrift store, put the scissors down in front of
me and explained the work. I saw it as a kind of leveling of
the student - teacher relationship and a way of getting into
something that was timely in terms of both performance and
social issues - the war in Vietnam, riots, and the feeling of
some of us against authority in society. And here I was, the
authority figure . . . . [12] Hendricks’s performance seems
to have been more about challenging the authority of the
performer rather than his vulnerability.
Thus a feminist interpretation of the piece seems to presume
a female performer - something never mandated by the artist
herself. This in turn likely reflects a commonly held notion
that an original performer and an original performance
constitute an authentic version of the piece. Curiously, more
recent performances by men (Jim Bovino at the Walker Art
Center in 2001 and John Noga at the University of Akron in
2007, for example) have more closely kept to Ono’s score.
Both Bovino and Noga assumed the seated position indicated in
Ono’s instruction and maintained a calm, passive demeanor.
Thus performed, the more recent feminist framings seem
irrelevant - and the “content” seems more clearly to be the
actions of the audience members themselves.
This notion of the “original” performance work that underlies
much of the recent interest in performance “reenactment”
might well hold true for other performances by other artists,
but not of performances encoded in scores - Fluxus or
otherwise. Marina Abramović, who recently performed a number
of well - known performance works from the 1960s and 1970s at
the Guggenheim Museum (Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005),
spoke about her own work of the 1970s at a symposium that
followed the week of performances: “We never wanted to repeat
things . . . . We never even wanted to be photographed. We
were pure pure pure.” [13] Curiously, her week of historic
performances was made possible by what Nancy Princenthal
characterizes as a “radical response.”
By treating the irremediably category - resistant performance
form as if it were, say, popular music, and translating
“instructions” as “score,” a performance could be
re - presented by anyone with the necessary stamina and
determination (no small qualifications). If the original
artists were credited and paid, the whole messy medium could
be brought into the world of copyright and distribution and
licensing fees - in a word, into the marketplace. To use
another mouthful of a word, it could also, Abramović argues,
thereby be brought into the academic discourse of history.”
[14]
Of course, this concept of performance score has existed
within the Fluxus orbit since at least the early 1960s - the
very period at stake in Abramović’s project. More
problematic, however, is the idea that new performances
provide an object of sorts for art historical study. As
demonstrated above, reformulations of Cut Piece have arguably
contributed to a distortion of the work, more so than an
illumination of it. On the other hand, the nature of Ono’s
work seems not merely to allow this, but encourage it.
Indeed, one might argue that Cut Piece, more than anything
else, exploits the hermeneutic circle among artist, score,
performer, audience, and critic.
Readings of Cut Piece as feminist, pacifist,
anti - authoritarian, Buddhist, Christian - and even as a
striptease - are all valid. The many and varied interpretations
of Cut Piece by artist, performers, audiences, and critics
testify to the work’s great power - a power embedded in its
score. But most importantly, Cut Piece is an incredibly rich
and poetic work that poses seldom - asked questions about the
nature of art itself and in the process opens itself up to a
multitude of readings. To assert that any of its performances
or interpretations are definitive denies the work the very
multivalence at its core and minimizes the qualities that
make it forever vital and alive.
NOTES
1. Dick Higgins, Postface, New York: Something Else Press,
1964, 2.
2. Jennifer Allen, “‘Einmal ist keinmal’: Observations on
Reenactment,” in Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in
Contemporary Art, edited by Sven Lütticken, Rotterdam: Witte
de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 2005, 211–13.
3. Dick Higgins, “Fluxus Theory and Reception,” in The Fluxus
Reader, New York: Academy Editions, 1998, 230.
4. E - mail correspondence with the author, March 28, 1997.
5. Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt, Yoko Ono: Objects
and Arias, Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 90.
6. Marcia Tanner, “Mother Laughed: The ‘Bad Girls’ Avant -
Garde,” in Bad Girls, New York: New Museum of Contemporary
Art, 1994, 61.
7. Robert Enright, “Instructions in the Marital Arts: A
Conversation with Yoko Ono,” Border Crossings 13,1 (Winter
1994): 37.
8. Roger Perry and Tony Elliott, “Yoko Ono,” Unit (December
1967): 26–27.
9. Yoko Ono, “If I Don’t Give Birth Now, I Will Never Be Able
To,” Just Me! The Very First Autobiographical Essay by the
World’s Most Famous Japanese Woman, Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1986, 34–36. This article was originally
published in the summer of 1974 in the Japanese magazine,
Bungei Shunju, during Ono’s “Yoko Ono and Plastic Ono Super
Band: Let’s Have a Dream” tour. This translation was
commissioned by the author from Akira Suzuki.
10. “The title is ‘Stripping’ - avant - garde musician, Ono
Yoko’s recital,” Shukan Taishu 36,10 (September 1964): 1.
This translation was commissioned by the author from Sumie
Ota. Thanks to Mikihiko Hori for providing publication
details for this previously unidentified press cutting from
the artist’s files.
11. “The Hippiest Artistic Happening: ‘Step Up and Strip Me
Nude,’” TAB 18,2 (June 1968): 65–68.
12. Jon Hendricks’s personal communication with the author,
New York City, February 4, 1998. In a personal communication
of June 6, 2001, Hendricks recalled that he was seated in a
chair for his performance.
13. Abramović, quoted in Nancy Princenthal, “Back for One
Night Only!” Art in America (February 2006): 90.
14. Princenthal, 90.
KEVIN CONCANNON is Associate Professor of Art History at the
Myers School of Art at The University of Akron–Ohio. With
John Noga, he is curator of Yoko Ono Imagine Peace Featuring
John & Yoko’s Year of Peace, currently traveling, and Agency:
Art and Advertising, scheduled for September 12 through
November 8, 2008 at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngtown
State University.
© 2008 Kevin Concannon
Published in PAJ - A Journal of Performance and Art
Sept 90 (2008), pp. 81–93