Yoko
Ono live in Liverpool on April 4th 2008 The
Bluecoat website: "Returning 41 years after her first ever paid perfomance
was given at the Bluecoat, Yoko Ono gives a special one hour live performance." "Tickets
for her gig sold out in minutes and Yoko agreed a couple of days ago to a live
feed for the event going into the Bluecoat hub and the big screen in the city
centre." "Yoko Ono gave a live performance to a
packed out audience at the Bluecoat on Friday 4 April. Hundreds of people who
missed out on tickets were able to see live streaming of the performance in the
Hub at the Bluecoat as well as on the BBC Big Screen in Liverpool's Clayton Square.
(--) Yoko started by taking the audience back to 1967 with footage of her performance
at the Bluecoat. She went on to show footage of her with John Lennon, invited
the audience to remove bandages she had wrapped herself in, crocheted, changed
costume and hats, and danced with the audience to a remix of Give Peace a Chance."  Photos
of Yoko Ono at the Bluecoat
On
Flickr 1 2
"I'm
75 and I'm alive and very thankful to be here every day, and to still be in love
with life, and with you" - so began Yoko Ono at the start of her live performance
at the Bluecoat last night. It was 41 years since the avant-garde
icon appeared at the very same Liverpool venue, and it had clearly given the artist
cause to reflect. What the audience got was less the "wacky
Yoko" of caricature and more an uplifting journey that showed her at her
very best. She started off standing in front of a large screen
showing footage of her 1967 Bluecoat performance where she requested the audience
wrap her from head to foot in bandages. Footage of Ono and
John Lennon from their "bed-in" days followed; she later danced and
wailed along to the video for her song Walking on Thin Ice, and showed a short
documentary on her 2004 work Onochord. When
she called the audience up to dance with her to a lengthy remix of Give Peace
a Chance, from children to Culture Company head honchos, they didn't need to be
asked twice."
Jorge
Artajo visited the exhibition
Yoko Ono performed
at The Bluecoat Society of Arts in Liverpool under the title Music of the Mind,
including The Fog Machine as part of Goodnight Piece.
According
to Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects by Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt, this performance
("concert") was sponsored by the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS)
along with the other performance by the same title held at the Jeanette
Cochrane Theatre in London in November 1966. These programmes included events
by Yoko Ono: Fly Piece (members of the audience jumped
off ladders simulating flying), Bag Piece, Fog Piece
(Yoko Ono sitting in clouds of fog, with audience members wrapping her in gauze)
and Sweep Piece (Yoko Ono sweeping the stage). Yoko
Ono: Arias and Objects by Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt: "By 1965
Ono's concerts were billed as "Music of the Mind". By limiting her musical
components to the sounds produced in the minds of each audience member, Ono intensified
an internal stillness much like that featured in Zen meditation practice." The
Bluecoat performance 1967 information at Live Art Archive "Yoko Ono is giving Liverpool
a “wishing tree” to be planted in the city
centre. The public will be invited to hang messages on the
branches as part of the re-opening celebrations of the Bluecoat arts centre. John
Lennon’s widow will also give a show at the Bluecoat on April 4 – recalling
her first appearance there as an artist in 1967. The event
details are described as “a surprise”, but it could well reflect Ms
Ono’s original visit when she smashed a jug and gave out the pieces, suggesting
people meet up again in years to come to reassemble the item. Tickets
for the show, costing £15, and available on the Bluecoat website from noon
today, are expected to sell quickly. The Yoko wishing tree,
which will form part of a six-week exhibition, beginning on March 15, will later
be planted in the Bluecoat’s garden courtyard. The exhibition
will also include a four-minute black and white TV film of Yoko’s 1967 visit
– two years before she married John Lennon. She had been invited to Liverpool
after a Liverpool art school teacher spotted her work at Alexandra Palace, London. Bluecoat
artistic director Bryan Biggs said: “This time she is doing a one-hour show.” Yoko’s
show will take place in the new 200-seater performance space – part of the
Bluecoat’s £12.5m refurbishment." 
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yoko
at the bluecoat 2008
