Yoko TimeOut interview - 1968

[Jen]

www.timeout.com/30years/
Interview 1968
Yoko Ono by Tony Elliott

Yoko Ono: a reputation as diffuse and diverse as the things she does. She
will be remembered by most for her 'bottoms' film, cherished by others for
her kite flying or her 'Painting to let the evening light go through'. Like
a bee she never rests in one place, disseminating her pollen, nurturing the
conception of her ideas and attitudes in others before flying elsewhere to
begin again.

Her biography runs as follows:
Born: bird year
Early childhood: collected skies
Adolescence: gave birth to a grapefruit, collected snails, clouds, garbage,
cans etc. Have graduated many schools specialising in these subjects.

At present: travelling as a private lecturer of the above subjects and
others; recipient of Hal Kaplow Award. She is a composer, artist, poet,
creator of events and philosopher. She has made films; thirty minute studies
of the striking of a match, the blinking of an eye, the movement of a smile.
'Number four' was about bottoms.

'I'm on the stage usually and asking people to come and fly or something. I
don't fly.'

Her works include an all white chess set and 'A painting to be stepped on'.
She has had various exhibitions with exhibits including an unfinished
painting added to by each visitor and a totally white room called 'The Blue
Room Event'. Recently she held a thirteen-day-long dance festival, taking
place 'in your mind'.

'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.

'Basically I am interested in communication and therefore participation of
everybody. I'm just part of the participation and the thing to participate
should be basically a mind sort of thing. I can express it in any medium,
just as you use water in everything for cooking.

'I'm on the stage usually and asking people to come and fly or something. I
don't fly. I'm just sitting there and watching them fly. I might bring out
huge very high ladders and ask people to fly off them. They can jump off the
middle, they don't have to go from the top. Part of my pieces is imaginary.
There are many people who don't actually jump off, but they do so in a way,
because they see the ladder and see themselves go up there and jump off.

'All my pieces are white because I think that white is the only colour that
allows imaginary colour to be put on. In the Lisson Gallery I'm going to
have a one room environment that's called 'The Blue Room Event'. The room is
completely white and you're supposed to stay in the room until it becomes
blue.

'I consider my shows, and especially this one, like giving an elephant's
tail. When a blind man says "what's an elephant", you lead the man to an
elephant and let him grasp the tail and say "that's an elephant". The
existing material in the gallery is like an elephant's tail and the larger
part is in your mind. But you have to give a tail to lead into it. The thing
is to promote a physical participation that will lead you into this larger
area of mind.

'I think that art is good just as anything is good in a sense that it's
better if anything happens than nothing. So what I'm trying to do is make
something happen by throwing a pebble into the water and creating ripples.
It's like starting a good motion. I don't want to control the ripples and
everything.

'All my pieces are white because I think that white is the only colour that
allows imaginary colour to be put on.'

'When I made the bottoms film, people said why don't you make one where you
not only make them walk but run as well, or include the part where they take
off their pants. These are good variations. But I have so many ideas that I
can't afford to get hung up on variations. All I do is give an elephant's
tail, the inkling of the thing, the basic format, and then after that people
can do it themselves. My things tend to be just basic. Somehow I feel the
natural trend today is not to be just basic, but decorative as well. I have
friends where everything is rainbow coloured and when they come here they
ask why everything is white.

'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.'

'Cut Piece' - a Yoko Ono event - involved an audience who cut off pieces of
Yoko's clothing while she sat calmly on stage. '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."

'There was an event that I did for a programme on Japanese television. I
just went out into the street and gave away flowers. They thought it was
pretty stupid. The other happening makers on the programme did very
surrealistic, fantastic dramatic things, "very meaningful" things and there
I was just giving out flowers.

'The happening is like a theatrical thing, where you use people to do things
that are like abstract theatre and that have nothing to do with spontaneity
and experience. A good example is an event I did in New York, where people
had to get into a small bag, take their clothes off inside and contemplate.
There was this very beautiful dancer, who was in a very in-crowd, and who
was very used to doing happenings and things like that. She went into the
room and in just two minutes dashed out and said 'I did get into the bag and
I thought of taking my clothes off. Then I suddenly realised that there was
no point in taking my clothes off because no-one would see me anyway'. So in
a happening you're always being an exhibitionist in a way. That's typical of
a happening maker because she didn't have that personal urge.

'When I made the bottoms film, people said why don't you make one where you
not only make them walk but run as well, or include the part where they take
off their pants.'

'I'm very social conscious. when I make a painting I just don't want to
leave it at home. I think it has to evade all the phases of life. The
ultimate goal for me is a situation in this society, where ordinary
housewives visiting each other and waiting in the living room will say, "I
was just adding some circles to your beautiful de Kooning painting", or "I
was just adding some colour to your Peter Blake." There's this strange false
value that people create on art work. Art should be almost free like water
and light.

'Television was going to do something on the dance festival. I went there
and said that the first instruction is breathing. Breathe and do it in any
way you want to. The television people got very upset. They wanted something
more visual.

'If anybody wrote in, they just sent some flowers. Others thought I got a
lot of pounds out of it. I received letters saying that they didn't mind if
I was an eccentric, but would I keep it to myself and not ask a pound for my
nonsense? I'm not asking for a pound even. Flowerwise a pound's worth of
flowers could mean just one flower. The point is that it is very nice to do
the thing together. I usually wake up at dawn just to watch the sky or
breathe. This time, I thought maybe some other people are breathing with me.
It goes on to the thirteenth day and the instruction is then that you're the
best. I just can't wait until the thirteenth day comes.

'I think that gradually many of the hippies will turn their backs on me. I
don't believe in limited turning on like LSD. They think that's the only
turning on there is. I believe that there are ways of turning on like
walking barefoot in the park or dancing in the wind. 'This swinging age is
now in its beginning stage, like in jazz where you had hot and cool jazz.
The hot jazz first and then the cool jazz. It's terribly hot now and I hope
it will soon cool off. That's the way I want to go. I am dealing with the
age I hope will come.'

© Time Out Group 2000.

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one someday.
-Bill Gates

[robertandrews]

Thanks, that was enjoyable to read. Not knowing much about Yoko, I find she
has a fascinating point of view -- very Asian, I suppose. I liked her
elephant metaphor & the Buddha story as well. I think I understand a little
more of what she meant to John.