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The
report and photos by Nell Beram. Page two.
My
husband, one-year-old daughter, and I can report no Yoko sightings this evening,
although there was ample "no autographs or photos, please" signage indicating
that she was there somewhere. Tons of people came out, and I was impressed by
how diverse (racially and in terms of age) the attendees were-but then what else
can one expect from a university museum? There were at least three other babies
in attendance, but my precocious little imp was the only one participating in
Cleaning Piece. (Viewers are faced with a mound of palm-sized rocks that they
are encouraged to place in a pile marked either "Mound of sorrow" or
"Mound of joy.") There was a nice vibe throughout the exhibition, although
I was annoyed by a man who made a shocked utterance in response to the full-frontal
nudity exhibited in Fly, a reel of which runs constantly. My husband and I hope
to do several more tours of the exhibition sans cranky baby, but even in my mom
stupor I could render a verdict that YES is a stunning achievement. It made me
glad that a half-dozen years ago I went to see a Jeff Koons exhibition that was
essentially a crash course in bad conceptual art - it helped me create a model
in my mind of what I consider the good sort. This is it.
I
can only surmise that this was billed as a "lecture" because so much
that Yoko does defies description. The front row wasn't an
option for me this time-seats were reserved for more important folk-so I settled
for second row, center. (Subtle, no?) On stage were seven white teapots in various
states of functionality and, at stage right, two vases, two pairs of scissors,
and four blobs of yarn (yellow and white). Format-wise, Yoko's performance was
essentially identical to the one experienced by fellow AIU (YES Yoko Ono) contributors
Jason Koffman and Jody Denberg. But permit me to believe that unique to Boston
was Yoko's decision to come out wearing a flannel nightgown, announce "Oh
excuse me, I've got the wrong room," and flee. At this point, I was told
to can the picture taking, so I treasure the two images I have of Yoko in disarming
nightdress-a self-referential comment, I'm sure, on her image as someone not quite
of this earth. When Yoko returned in her customary black,
she described the significance of each teapot - the one with the hole in the bottom
is "art," because it can't be used; the broken one is "our hearts
after September 11," etc. Then she sat down for a conversation with List
director Jane Farver. During their dialogue, some slides were shown of images
that Yoko called her "borrowed art": work by de Kooning; the cover of
her 1981 album Season of Glass; famous photographs of unfamous people; etc. This
audience, which I noticed was largely female, got the joke. Farver
lobbed questions, and Yoko's answers were thoughtful, generous, and completely
unpretentious. To a question about her definition of performance art, she replied,
to everyone's amusement, "I have no idea." Farver, who had confessed
to being nervous at the start of their conversation, wasn't so rattled by the
end that she couldn't screw up the courage to jump in a bag with Yoko, who first
turned to us and explained that "We're going to a different dimension."
For a few minutes, all eyes were fixed on the amorphous blob at stage right that
was the two writhing and occasionally giggling women. First Yoko's black boots
came flying out, then Farver's pumps. Yoko finally emerged with shoulders bare;
Farver was a lump, still bagged. Here's the big treat: Yoko
proceeded to vocalize into a handheld mike for ten minutes or so. She was accompanied
by drummer Sam Koppelman, who played in IMA (Sean's band) on Yoko's 1995 album,
Rising. Yoko made very few words with her voice, but the sounds she made nevertheless
relayed a narrative-first there was rage, then weakness, then hope, etc. She has
a mighty neck, which seemed to function like a muscle pulling the sounds out of
her gut. While this was going on, we watched a video of shimmery,
unfocused images of Yoko and Lennon walking hand-in-hand in the streets of New
York, certainly in the late 1970s or in 1980. (The same video was set to a dance
track and played on a TV screen at the exhibition. The AIU editor: this is the
DVD A Blueprint For The Sunrise...) At the end, we heard birds chirping, and there
appeared an image of Yoko, Lennon, and Sean standing in front of some trees. The
image of the three faded as slowly as it arrived, but the image of the trees lingered.
Along the bottom of the screen were the words "A Blueprint for the Sunrise." Next
up: Jon Hendricks summoned Jane Farver from the bag ("It's nice in that dimension,"
she noted), and Jon and a man of identity unknown sat down before the yarn and
vases on stage and commenced cutting the yarn into fragments and dropping them
in the vessels. While PR woman Hiroko and someone else started binding audience
members together with light-blue yarn, Yoko, cross-legged and barefoot, began
fielding questions. The conversation covered a lot of the same ground as the press
conference - Yoko's response to September 11, the need for positive thinking-but
there were two unforgettable moments. The first was when the young woman sitting
next to me burst into tears during her question about how Yoko keeps working and
making art when "devastation is inevitable." The second was when a man
who apparently came to see not Yoko Ono but John Lennon's widow asked what she
thought first drew Lennon to her. There was an audible groan from the audience,
and Yoko made a "you should know better" face. "Sex," was
her marvelously terse retort, and most people would have interpreted it as displeasure
with the question. But not this guy: Well, what was the second thing that attracted
Lennon to her, then? (I am not kidding. He really said this.) Because
Yoko's words on the topic of connectedness and group accountability over the past
two days had primed us well, it came as no surprise when she was, like the rest
of us, snared by yarn at program's end.
This
event was the most comfortable, educational, and seemingly spontaneous of the
spectacular lot, perhaps because Bo Smith, head of the MFA's film program, was
so deft and specific with his questions. Yoko was vivacious and playful (sorry,
no pictures; cameras were forbidden), and I found it interesting that she seemed
less nostalgic about the sixties and seventies than about her childhood. The
MFA crowd was considerably older, whiter, and more male than the MIT crowd. (There
was an admission price of $15 to this event.) Before Smith started firing questions
at Yoko, we saw three of her fleshier films: No. 4 (1966, 5.5 minutes), Fly (1970,
25 minutes), and Freedom (1970, 1 minute). Smith remarked
at the power of No. 4, which, in showing an ongoing series of nude bottoms of
various proportions, offers an "array of humanity," and Yoko took the
compliment as an opportunity to reiterate her wish that, especially on the heels
of September 11, we "should become more playful again... . I think it's nice
to kid each other a little." As for the film's genesis, it was "not
something that was made with the intention of giving laughter... I thought, Wouldn't
it be nice to [show] each section... moving very differently. [It was an] intellectual
consideration." She went on to see the "political implication." Next
they chatted about Fly, in which a fly takes up residence on various parts of
an anonymous nude woman's reclining, unflinching, magnified body. It turns out
that the soundtrack, comprised almost entirely of Yoko's eerily fly-like vocalizations,
was created without the film in mind: It was an improv made at another time in
a studio. I just happened to work. Yoko described her commitment to make films
without traditional means as the "arrogance of youth - Well, I wouldn't say
'arrogance of youth,' because I'm still arrogant... I was proud of making a film
without going through the usual process that a filmmaker has to go through. Making
a film was only the design of it." Since No. 4 and Fly
are part of the YES exhibition, the evening's highlight for me was viewing the
lesser-known Freedom. It featured Yoko, chin to navel (approximately), wearing
only a lilac bra; the only action was the sight of her hands wrestling with its
front clasp. (The soundtrack was by Lennon.) About the film's obvious feminism,
Yoko said, "I wanted to show how we tried to but we couldn't quite do it."
She spoke of the difference between women of the middle- and upper-middle-class
social status and women who are less privileged, and she said that the latter,
with whom she identified more, were "in a position where they can't really
free themselves. I was feeling like I was part of that movement." They
talked a bit about Cut Piece -Yoko commented that nuns (of all people) responded
positively because they related on a "spiritual level" to the "form
of giving"; she also recalled the particular "music" that was created
by the scissors cutting at her clothes-and then it was Q & A time. On
the genesis of her vocal style: When she was a child, Yoko visited the young children
of her mother's servants, although she'd been forbidden to do so. The girls "were
talking about how somebody had the experience of having a baby. And I remembered
that. I was interested in 12-tone music, and I thought what they were doing was
incredible. Using sounds that weren't operatic [Yoko gave a quick example]...
I thought, Fantastic!... That's how I arrived at doing those voices." On
the genesis of her visual art and on how "imagining became an active part
of my life": Children were evacuated from Tokyo to the countryside during
World War II, and Yoko and her brother found their stomachs rumbling. But she
was less distressed about being hungry than about her usually upbeat brother's
lethargy. So she said to him, "Let's create a menu, okay?" I was pushing
him. "I want ice cream" [he said]. He was getting really excited, which
was great, because this was just a conceptual menu... We can do so much with our
minds." On her activism: "I don't feel that I just
came here accidentally. [The YES exhibition] was set up a long time ago. I have
to say this because scientists are starting to prove it: The stem cells are all
together. Why are we angry? Our heartbeats are beating together. And together,
we can change the world." At some point buttons were passed around the audience.
Mine said "free
us" above "Y.O. 01"; my husband's said "free me." It
wasn't all heavy. The moment that best summed up the evening was Yoko's coy response
to a young guy's query as to whether she would go to the prom with him. "I'll
look into my schedule."
A
bit of background: The piece asks participants to take a broken object, such as
a piece of china, and glue it or sew it or tape it back together. At the press
conference, Yoko commented, "When I did [Mend Piece] on TV [The Mike Douglas
Show, 1972], I got letters. One man [wrote], 'My family was about to separate,
and we decided to stay together' [because of the piece]. It's not mending the
cup so much as it's what you think when you're mending it." This
event was essentially unpublicized; everyone I talked to first learned of it during
Friday's press conference, as I did. I arrived at 4:30 at the Carpenter Center's
"pit"- a concrete sub-ground-level space with glass windows on one side
looking into the museum. There were two tables covered with pieces of broken ceramic
and china dishes, mugs, and plates. A museum staffperson told me I wasn't allowed
down in the pit to photograph the tables because (groan) I didn't have a Harvard
ID, but a nice woman named Kaity who was covering the piece for some Harvard publication
(I forget which) offered to do the snapping for me. (Thanks, Kaity.) As I milled
with the others in the gathering crowd, I spotted the ubiquitous Jon Hendricks,
who cheerfully confessed that he was tired. I either said or meant to say that
I was exhausted just trailing him around town for three days. At
5 PM, Yoko walked down the steps into the pit and explained (sans microphone)
what she was going to do. Then she demonstrated Mend Piece by working to repair
a shattered sky-blue plate. I noticed that she got down and dirty with the Elmer's
and other glues provided-no gloves for Yoko. At one point she sent Jon scrambling
for some Scotch tape. Finally, we were invited to participate, and many dozens
of kids and adults marched down the steps and began working alongside Yoko and
at the other table. I stayed on the ledge surrounding the
pit so that I could snap photographs, and for the first time I became acutely
aware of the level of security Yoko's public appearances require. There were two
muscly men in expensive suits standing in the shadows the whole time, surveying
our faces and surroundings. Despite their presence, which was a constant reminder
that danger is always a possibility, there was an affectionate and tranquil vibe
to the event. It was focused and utterly fanfare-free. Participants didn't have
time to be star struck: They were too busy working.
This
was the one of the six Yoko events that didn't find its rhythm-through no fault
of hers. It followed the format of the MIT lecture (see above) but didn't have
the same momentum or mood. Perhaps the image of Yoko in her nightie would have
broken the proverbial ice. There wasn't much laughter at the projected images
of the "borrowed art" appearing above the heads of Yoko and Bruce Jenkins,
curator of the Harvard Film Archive, while they talked (I hesitate to say chatted).
"By the way, this is supposed to be funny" (I paraphrase) Yoko told
us midconversation. The burly guards were again in evidence
during bagism. (As you may have guessed, cameras were verboten.) While Yoko and
Sam jammed, I could really hear that her voice was classically trained-No, world,
she doesn't just do that screechy stuff because she can't carry a tune. In fact,
it struck me that for all of Yoko's reputation as fringy, confounding, boundary
pushing, artistically inaccessible, etc., she never once expressed a sentiment
that wouldn't have been welcome on Sesame Street. During
the lackluster Q & A, MIT's Hiroko was blindfolded and sent to creep through
the audience in order to (according to Yoko) "find the tail." (It wasn't
until it was time to leave the auditorium that I realized we never learned if
the tail was found or the meaning of the conquest.) Jon Hendricks and some other
folks passed around little sky-blue
jigsaw-puzzle pieces with "Y.O. SPRING '98" on one side and "091101"
(as in the date) on the other. "Get some rest, Jon,"
I said as we all filed out of the auditorium, and he kissed my cheek. Then one
of Yoko's security dudes asked me to stand still for a moment so that Yoko, so
diminutive that I hadn't realized she was at Jon's other side, could pass.
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©
Nell Beram / AIU 2001
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