On 9 Oct 2008, John Lennon's birthday, Yoko Ono asks the people of Iceland to join her and many others across the rest of the world in praying for peace and stability.
At 8pm, as the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is illuminated on the island of Viðey she asks everyone to join together and let the power of light and prayer become a collective expression of the desire for peace and harmony on our planet.
Dear Friends,
Please join me not only in remembering John on October 9th but also in spreading the message of peace. This is something that was so important to John - the fact that we could all work together for the positive good of our planet. He would have loved how we are all mobilizing ourselves in thought and in action. It's time for action and the action is peace!
TONIGHT in Toronto: IMAGINE PEACE at Nuit Blanche
Current mood: dancing
Category: dancing Art and Photography
TONIGHT in Toronto: IMAGINE PEACE at Nuit Blanche NUIT BLANCHE On October 4, 2008: from sunset (6:52pm) to sunrise For one sleepless night, experience Toronto transformed by artists. Discover art in galleries, museums and unexpected places. From bridges and tunnels to warehouses and stadiums, choose from more than 155 destinations and chart your own path. It's impossible to see everything in 12 short hours! Check out the 2008 Programme details and make note of your favourites, then visit the Plan Ahead section of the website for useful tools to create your own art-after-dark adventure.
Yoko Ono: IMAGINE PEACE Corner of Liberty St. and Jefferson Ave. [map] Tel: 416-338-0338 Yoko Ono has often remarked that all of her work is a form of wishing. For "Wish Tree", participants are invited to write a wish on a piece of paper and tie it to the branch of a tree, as a form of collective secular prayer. The resulting mass of wishes resembles white flowers blossoming from afar.
The IMAGINE PEACE billboard continues the advertising strategy of the "War is Over!" campaign that Ono and Lennon waged in the late sixties and early seventies. The language is both softened and more direct, but the implication of our complicity remains – peace will continue to elude us if we are unable to even fathom its existence. Forty-thousand buttons adorned with the phrase will also be distributed to visitors over the course of the evening.
Yoko Ono: WISDOM, JOY, FLIGHT, ACTION (2006) (from ’Formulas for Now’)
Category: Art and Photography
Yoko Ono: WISDOM, JOY, FLIGHT, ACTION (2006) from the book 'Formulas For Now' by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Formula for happiness: Artists design a formula for the 21st century. 'Design a formula for the 21st century' – that was the directive from the Swiss art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist to a selection of the world's greatest creative thinkers. The result? A series of witty, playful reflections on modern life. Words by Simon Usborne, The Independent.
Einstein was famously fond of the formula. During the summer of 1905, while carrying out his duties at a Swiss patent office, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist crafted what would become the most celebrated equation in history. E = mc², his proof that an object's mass depends on its energy, was a formula of such startling simplicity that Einstein wondered whether "the Lord might be laughing ... and leading me around by the nose". The Lord did not laugh, and Einstein's place in history was assured, but his interest in order extended beyond the realms of science. In a more playful mood, he is said to have penned a formula for success: "If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
The desire to formulate the seemingly unformulatable – to crystallise esoteric concepts such as success into single equations – has occupied the thoughts of countless other thinkers, but perhaps nobody more than Hans Ulrich Obrist. The eminent curator and co-director of exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London, has spent 15 years commissioning formulae from some of the biggest names in fields as diverse as mathematics and sociology, including Richard Dawkins, Damien Hirst and Yoko Ono. His brief was as concise as the most pleasing equation: "Make a formula for the 21st Century". It flummoxed as many people as it fascinated but soon the contributions came flooding in.
Obrist has now published more than 100 of his favourite formulae in Formulas For Now. They range from the fun to the fundamental, via the unintelligible and, in many cases, illegible – and many do away with traditional formats in favour of diagrams, recipes, manuscripts and manifestos. The variety has delighted Obrist and the offering that tickled him most came from Richard Hamilton, the renowned painter and pioneer of pop art. Hamilton's formula, 02 + I - 8 = p x (fa)3, where O is "the ball" and I is "the prick", follows his limerick: "A Wrangler of Trinity Hall, had the most mathematical ball. The square of its weight, plus his prick minus eight, equalled Pi times the cube of fuck all." "I love all the formulas in the book," Obrist says, "but I find the combination of art, maths and humour in this one irresistible."
The formula that first inspired Obrist was rather more vital. In an interview with a 100-year-old Albert Hoffman, the first man to synthesise LSD, the late Swiss scientist scrawled the formula for the psychedelic drug on the back of a napkin. "I found it fascinating that the life of this man could be summarised in this formula," Obrist says, "and that an invention with so many social repercussions could be encapsulated on a napkin."
Obrist used his contacts in the art world and beyond to invite others to offer their own formulae and the project quickly snowballed. "Whenever one arrived by e-mail I printed it out and pinned it on the wall. Little by little, it took over my life – they were everywhere." If nothing else, publishing the book was a way to liberate the walls of Obrist's study, but the curator turned collector is hungry for more. "This is something I want to grow over many years," he says. "I hope it will go online and become a forum for anyone to submit ideas." What about his own formula? "That's my big unrealised project – despite being inspired by so many people, I still haven't found my own answer. Perhaps I'll put it in volume two."
'Formulas For Now' by Hans Ulrich Obrist is published by Thames & Hudson, £12.95 (hardback). To order a copy at a special price (including postage & packing in the UK) call Independent Books Direct on 08700 798 897
What's your formula for the 21st century? Win a copy of the book by submitting yours to the Independent website here.
The Artwork of John Lennon Comes to Downtown Boulder
Category: Art and Photography
Working Class Hero – A Look into John's Life through his Artwork
This Friday through Sunday (Sept 26 – 28), fans of John Lennon have a unique opportunity to view pieces of his artwork through Yoko Ono presents Working Class Hero – A Look into John's Life through his Artwork. The exhibit (located at 902 Pearl St. in Downtown Boulder) will feature over 100 pieces of art created by Lennon between 1968 through 1980. For the past 15 years, this ever-changing exhibit has been one of the highest attended art showings in America and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities throughout the world. (The Boulder exhibit will raise money to help benefit the Emergency Family Assistance Association. The organization dedicated to helping those in the community with immediate needs for food, shelter and other basic necessities. A $2 donation is being suggested at the door.)
Many are familiar with Lennon's music, but few have had the pleasure of viewing his art. Before the world came to know him as a member of the Beatles, those close to him knew him as an artist. (He studied three years at Liverpool Art School.) The drawings featured in the exhibit are whimsical and intimate portraits of Lennon's life. His creative style highlights his keen sense of observation, wit and profound irony of the world as he saw it.
On display will be 'Bag One' lithographs signed by Lennon in the 70s, rare original drawings from the early 60s and limited edition prints reproduced from Lennon's drawings (signed by Yoko Ono, including the 'Real Love – The Drawings for Sean' editions (children's drawings sketched for his son (Sean Lennon) during the last few years of his life).
"I think John's art, for the most part, represents old fashion family traditions," said Yoko Ono. "He made a lot of social statements, but there's a lot about the family in his works." Lennon will be remembered as one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. His message of peace, hope and love still resonates through his artwork and is even more powerful and provocative nearly three decades after his untimely death. Come celebrate his life and artistic talents through this highly anticipated exhibit!
Hours: Friday - 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday – 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday – 11a.m. to 6 p.m.
Location: 902 Pearl Street (Corner of 9th and Pearl streets in Downtown Boulder) Map
For more information, contact Legacy Fine Art Productions at 888-ART-1969. For more information on the Emergency Family Assistance Association call 303-442-3042 or visit: www.efaa.org.
The 2007 GQ Music Special – YOKO ONO - GQ Magazine August 2007 UK Edition
Category: Life
The 2007 GQ Music Special – YOKO ONO GQ Magazine August 2007 UK Edition
Precisely how hip-hop are you? I wrote and sung some hip-hop songs in the Seventies, though they didn't call it hip-hop in those days. Listen to "What Did I Do" on Approximately Infinite Universe and "Yes, I'm A Witch" on A Story. That's hip-hop.
What was the best record in your parents' collection? All Thirties stuff. You would have loved it. All turned to ashes in WWII.
What's the weirdest thing you've ever bought? I went and bought a Chinese vibrator as a joke birthday present for a girlfriend. I suddenly noticed how the shop people were looking at me...and thought "I better get out of here... quick!"
Could you match Amy Winehouse drink for drink? I matched my husband. I wonder if Amy could.
Have you got any piercings we don't know about? You don't know about it because I didn't tell you.
As a successful musician, do you feel under pressure to "perform" in bed? No. But I'd first ask them to show me a recent doctor's certificate, his mom's permission in writing, and to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Are hybrid cars too girly for rock stars? Could somebody make it just as comfortable as a Bentley, please?
Which band would you like to see reform? The Beatles.
Which lyric are you most proud of writing? The ones I recorded. Why would I record them otherwise?
What's the most important item on your rider? I'd like to get a rider that will take me to the other Universe. I want to know what they're doing out there.
Who's the most famous person you've had in your house? My husband.
Have you ever been arrested? If I was, I don't remember.
When was the last time you fired a gun? Never.
Do you consider yourself a role model? "Don't do what I do. Just do what I say!"
Have you ever had sex to one of your own records? No. Have you?
What's the strangest gift you've ever received? Crocodile's tears.
Do you believe in God? Which God?
When was the last time you really lost your temper? Now - As I read these long line of questions!
What's the longest time you've gone without sex? I'd rather not remember.
Would you let Snoop Dogg into your country? My country of origin is Mars.
Would you rather be adopted by Madonna or Angelina? Either one.
How much do you think Heather Mills deserves from the divorce? None of your business.
Who tops the bill at your fantasy festival line-up? My son.
What would you give Pete Doherty and Kate Moss as a wedding present? A set of handcuffs.
Describe George Bush in three words. Don't know him.
What was your worst drug experience? Withdrawals.
What's the biggest media misconception about you? That I break-up stuff!
Who's your style icon? Me.
What music do you love that would surprise people? My own.
And the ones they didn't publish…
Where do you stand on leather trousers? It excites me just as real leather.
What's the worst thing a critic has ever said about you? When he said nothing.
Is it time for Robbie to admit defeat and rejoin Take That? Excuse me?
Should the Arctic Monkeys cheer up a bit? For what reason?
How far would you get on American idol? I applaud each one of them for being so courageous.
Who would play you in Calvin Harris the musical? I hope nobody.
Who runs your MySpace site? Whoever is running it, be kind...
If Tony Blair reformed Ugly Rumours, would you go to his gig? I might.
Scale of one to ten: how good looking are you? I'm doing alright.
Describe the way you dance. Till dawn.
What would you miss most if you weren't famous any more? Now, let me think...
What do you consider the most rock'n'roll holiday destination? Anywhere you enjoy.
What's the best ever book about pop music? One that doesn't trash anybody.
Have you looked yourself up on YouTube? I haven't gotten around to it.
FRIEZE TALKS: YOKO ONO KEYNOTE 5pm, Friday 17 October 2008 The Auditorium at Frieze Art Fair Marylebone Green, Regent's Park, London. [map]
Artist Yoko Ono will present a keynote lecture, demonstrating the continued importance of the performative practices and engagement with audiences that she has pursued since the 1960s.
Frieze Talks is a daily programme of keynote lectures, panel debates and discussions taking place in the Auditorium at Frieze Art Fair.
Access to Frieze Talks is included in the Frieze Art Fair admission ticket. Book admission tickets here.
Seats for talks can be individually booked from 11am on the day outside the Auditorium within the fair.
Ticket-holders are requested to arrive at the auditorium 15 minutes before the talk starts in order to guarantee a place.
The Frieze Art Fair is less than five minutes walk from Regent's Park tube station. Baker Street and Great Portland Street tube stations are also close by. Directions here.
Boris Groys, Carsten Höller, Yoko Ono and Cosey Fanni Tutti are all part of the international line-up of artists, philosophers, writers and cultural commentators making up Frieze Talks 2008.
Frieze Talks is presented by Frieze Foundation in collaboration with frieze magazine.
Jennifer Higgie, Co-Editor of Frieze magazine said, "We are excited about the richly diverse, international programme of speakers we have put together for the 2008 Frieze Talks. From artists and novelists to philosophers, architects, musicians, critics and curators, this year's participants will be discussing, illustrating, performing and arguing some of the myriad issues swirling around the world of art and visual culture today."
FRIEZE ART FAIR & TALKS 16-19 October 2008 Frieze Art Fair takes place every October in Regent's Park, London. The fair provides an environment to introduce and showcase new and established artists to visitors from around the world.
Frieze Art Fair features more than 150 galleries from around the world, providing visitors with a unique opportunity to see and buy art by the world's leading artists. Located in the English Gardens adjacent to Frieze Art Fair, the Sculpture Park is open to the public and features work by artists represented by galleries participating in Frieze Art Fair. The Sculpture Park is selected by curator David Thorp.
Frieze Art Fair is fully accessible to people with reduced mobility. Wheelchair users' companions: free. Guide dogs are welcome. For full details of our facilities, please call +44 (0)870 890 0514.
Frieze: 81 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3AY, UK Frieze Art Fair: Marylebone Green, Regent's Park, London. Tel: +44 (0) 20 3372 6111 info@friezeartfair.com
Nixon Dirty Trickster on McCain Team by Jon Weiner
Category: Life
Nixon Dirty Trickster on McCain Team by Jon Weiner
The man John McCain appointed to head his transition team, William E. Timmons, played a central role in the Nixon Administration's campaign to deport John Lennon in 1972.
Timmons is known today mostly as a lobbyist for the oil companies, but in 1972 he worked in the Nixon White House as Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. Strom Thurmond, the segregationist senator from South Carolina, sent a letter to Timmons in February, 1972, as the Nixon White House was gearing up for the President's re-election campaign. The letter informed Timmons that Lennon and his friends were "strong advocates" of a program to "dump Nixon," and that Lennon was planning "to hold rock concerts in various primary election states." The purpose of the concerts was political: "to stimulate 18-year-old registration" and to urge people to demonstrate against Nixon at the Republican National Convention. Thurmond's memo to Timmons concluded, "if Lennon's visa is terminated it would be a strategy counter-measure."
At the time--spring of 1972--the war in Vietnam was going strong, Lennon was living in New York City and had become a prominent antiwar voice, singing Give Peace a Chance and Imagine at antiwar rallies and concerts.
Timmons wrote back to Thurmond a few weeks later. The "Dear Strom" letter reported that "the Immigration and Naturalization Service has served notice" on Lennon "that he is to leave this country no later than March 15." It was signed by Timmons "with warm regards."
The information Thurmond sent to Timmons was correct--it came from the staff of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, of which Thurmond was a member. Lennon and his new friends Jerry Rubin and Rennie Davis, who four years earlier had organized the 1968 antiwar protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, were planning a concert tour to mobilize young people to vote in the upcoming election. Of course registering young people to vote was not a crime--but the Republicans were concerned about the "youth vote," since 1972 was going to be the first election in which 18-year-olds had the right to vote, and it was widely assumed young people were mostly antiwar and thus anti-Nixon.
Nixon's effort to deport Lennon never succeeded. In the end, Lennon stayed in the United States while Nixon left the White House, resigning in the Watergate affair. But Lennon did curtail his antiwar organizing during the 1972 campaign, on the advice of his immigration lawyer, Leon Wildes, who told him not to do anything to further antagonize the Nixon people.
Timmons left the White House shortly after Nixon's resignation and founded his own lobbying firm. In 2008 he was registered to represent the American Petroleum Institute, Visa USA, Anheuser-Busch and Freddie Mac. He's also worked with virtually every Republican presidential campaign, starting with Bob Dole.
McCain's selection of Timmons ties the candidate to Nixon's dirty tricks and enemies list. Nixon's campaign to deport John Lennon was an example of White House abuse of power--the use of the power of the president to punish those who criticized him or opposed his policies.
The Thurmond-Timmons documents were first published in Rolling Stone, July 31, 1975.
The story of Nixon's effort to deport Lennon was told in the 2006 documentary The US vs. John Lennon and in the book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files
About Jon Wiener Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. Since then he's written more than 100 stories and reviews for the magazine, many about American history, university politics, and California life. He's also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host.
Wiener sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act in 1983 for its files on John Lennon. With the help of the ACLU of Southern California, Wiener v. FBI went all the way to the Supreme Court before the FBI settled it in 1997, releasing all but ten of the contested pages. That story is told in Wiener's book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files; some of the pages of the Lennon FBI file are posted here. The story is also told in the documentary, The U.S. Versus John Lennon, released in 2006; Wiener served as historical consultant for the film, and appears in it. Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago 8, published in 2006, is edited with an introduction by Wiener (with illustrations by Jules Feiffer). His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. It has been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and Italian.
Wiener hosts a weekly afternoon drive-time interview radio program on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles His guests have included Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Barbara Ehrenreich, Frank Rich, Seymour Hersh, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amos Oz, Mike Davis, Elmore Leonard, John Dean, Julian Bond, Al Franken, and Terry Gross of the NPR show Fresh Air.
Jon Wiener was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended Central High School there. He has a B.A. from Princeton and a Ph.D. from Harvard, where he began working as a writer in the late sixties for the underground paper The Old Mole. He lives in Los Angeles.
Yoko Ono on The Beatles White Album
Category: Music
THE BEATLES: THE WHITE ALBUM MOJO Magazine, October 2008
40 years on, The Beatles' White Album still holds a plethora of secrets and continues to defy definition. Yoko Ono, Donovan, Oasis and many more join MOJO for the first part of our gigantic, 30-page foray into John, Paul, George and Ringo's most intriguing record ever.
In this month's MOJO, Yoko Ono - Fluxus artist, film-maker, musician, peace activist and, of course, the wife of the late Beatle, John Lennon - writes exclusively about her memories and opinions and the "fiercely independent composers" behind the "grand hodge-podge" of jewels that was The Beatles' White Album.
THEY WERE LIKE FOUR ZEN MONKS, JUST DOING IT, TOGETHER! by Yoko Ono
I thought The White Album was a very hip album. I'm not talking about the obvious: Revolution 9. For me to talk about that one is boring. I was impressed with the musicianship of John, Paul and George, each of them playing acoustic guitars like pro classical guitarists, on Julia, Blackbird and While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Those three songs are jewels. I didn't think Ringo was intimidated by them, either. Though he was quiet, you knew he was right there, not missing a beat. In fact, his beat was what made each song alive.
Through my life, I've met interesting, creative musicians; Henry Cowell, Edgar Varese, Stefan Wolpe, Karl Stockhausen, John Cage, La Monte Young, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Ornett Coleman. You want more names? But with The Beatles, it surprised me that there was a unity about them that I never saw in any other group of guys. In fact, you couldn't say they were a group of guys. Each guy was a fiercely independent composer - a fool on the hill of his own creation, so to speak. The Beatles were a group, physically and in spirit. They weren't back-slapping each other or anything. But you just knew that they were very close.
In fact, they were like four Zen monks. Just doing it. Together. I know that, initially, critics were not so kind to The White Album since it came just after Sgt. Pepper - the big bang. A lot of them made little niggling remarks that did not add up to anything. "Why a double?" was one. I totally agreed with Paul when he said that a double was fine. In fact, the fact that it was not a carefully edited single album was great. Not contrived. It was an album of strings of songs seemingly strung in that order for almost no reason. It was hodge-podge in a grand way, showing the state of mind that they were in then. I liked that.
I'm just telling you the general impression I had of The White Album. I don't feel like talking about what I experienced in observing the making of each song, or any one song, as MOJO suggested that I do. But I will make one tiny point. Revolution "in" and "out" seemed to have been a big issue for the revolutionaries in those days. John was simply saying his spirit was "in" but his body was "out". A confession of a truly conceptual guy. His idea of revolution was without violence.
Like I said, I don't feel the need to spell out anecdotes about the making of the songs. I loved them all. And it was an immense privilege to have been there. When The White Album comes out again, I will buy a couple, keep one for myself, and send one to my musician son. He would probably say, "Mom, you don't think I know this one?" No, son. It's just a ritual. You might be surprised that you didn't know it. Put it on your stereo. It's quite an inspiring album. Listen to it again, a few times. Your dad would have liked it.
YOKO ONO’S CUT PIECE: From Text to Performance and Back Again - by Kevin Concannon
Category: Art and Photography
CUT PIECE (1964) 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&183;
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.
9/11 affected me like it affected you. It was frightening. I was in New York and I was frightened. In my life, the most scary thing that had happened was World War II. I was in Tokyo when enemy planes were coming in, bombing the city. So I see it a little differently to the Americans who had never experienced an attack on their homeland. Pearl Harbour was different because it was on an island, further away.
I thought of 3 things on September 11th: first was the second World War, second was the day of John's passing - because it happened equally unexpectedly - and third were the people who lost their partner or a family member.
After 9/11 many artists asked: What can we do now? Together - art and music - can cover the world and make it peaceful. Art is international so all of us can benefit from it.
Following the political changes through the year after 9/11, I felt terribly vulnerable - like the most delicate wind could bring me tears. It was as though everything I believed in was rapidly melting away, while I continued walking still carrying my beliefs. The front page of the papers and the TV news were feeding us what they wanted to - assaulting our senses. Men without faces were at work. Force and intimidation were in the air. People were silenced. I always thought I wanted to live forever, that I was one person who was not scared of doing so. But would I want to live surrounded by this world as we know now? Some people went to Palestine to act as human shields. That really touched me. If all of us stood to become human shields instead of machine gunning each other... My immediate thought was to join them. I almost did, and didn't. Later, the world heard of the death of Rachel Corrie. She made her stand for all of us.
Imagine all the people living life in peace. I think that that's a very strong thing to do. It might be a very controversial thing to do. Because it's a very powerful thing to do. But I think it's all right to say that. I don't think that goes against the policy of this country or anything like that. I think, in the end, all people in this country really want peace. But how to get there, some people are thinking in a different way of course. But imagining, that's something that we can all do, even when we have different opinions about how to get there. Imagining peace, imagining peace. That's okay. That we can all do, without feeling the conflict.
I am now on the road promoting IMAGINE PEACE - going from Germany to Italy to Poland to Iceland to Britain to China to Japan. Today, on 9/11, I am in the air flying from one city to another.
On this day, don't forget to: Think PEACE, Act PEACE, and Spread PEACE and tell your friends to IMAGINE PEACE. Remember we are family. I love you! yoko
