[00:00:00] This is the second part of our two-part episode dedicated to Yoko Ono's retrospective exhibition
[00:00:17] at Tate Modern, Music of the Mind.
[00:00:21] The exhibition was curated by Juliette Bingham and Patricia Dander.
[00:00:26] It is a co-production of two institutions, Tate Modern and Kunstsamlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.
[00:00:32] It is open until the 1st of September, so run!
[00:00:36] Go there, go there often if you can.
[00:00:39] Just a heads up, content warning.
[00:00:42] We do briefly mention suicide, so if this is something you'd rather skip, just do
[00:00:49] it.
[00:00:50] There are other episodes out there for you.
[00:00:51] We are recording a brand new one in a few days.
[00:00:56] So I will not keep you waiting any longer.
[00:00:58] This is a packed episode with seemingly impossible chess games and butts, lots and lots of butts.
[00:01:06] Enjoy the episode.
[00:01:15] Hello and welcome back to Exhibitionistas, the podcast where we explore the work of
[00:01:20] an artist through their solo exhibition.
[00:01:23] This week is part two of the Music of the Mind exhibition at the Tate Modern with work by
[00:01:28] the incomparable Yoko Ono.
[00:01:32] When we left you last time, it was 1962 and Ono was hosting avant-garde event gatherings
[00:01:38] in the loft on Chamber Street, New York.
[00:01:41] She was chucking jello at the wall.
[00:01:43] She was almost burning the place down after she lit the paper on fire.
[00:01:49] She was there with the likes of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor,
[00:01:54] Terry Riley and Lamont Young.
[00:01:56] It was just a who's-who of the art world in the 60s that were all coming to her loft
[00:02:03] and experimenting with avant-garde art.
[00:02:07] I have to say, I just read in the catalogue that Marcel Duchamp was there as well.
[00:02:14] Yes, I saw that too.
[00:02:16] It's quite a thing.
[00:02:19] Absolutely huge.
[00:02:20] She had also rebelled against her parents and married a Japanese composer Toshi Ichinagi
[00:02:28] with whom she had a creative partnership as well as a romantic partnership.
[00:02:33] That was kind of coming to the end at the end of our last episode.
[00:02:36] They were drifting apart.
[00:02:39] We had also just stepped into our exhibition at the Tate where we saw her wishing trees
[00:02:44] and discussed how they might speak to one's higher mind as they entered the exhibition.
[00:02:49] We watched her burn a match on film to a soundtrack of inaudible music ever challenging,
[00:02:55] right from the start.
[00:02:57] So this week we'll take you through her artistic inspiration in the 60s and 70s
[00:03:02] and through some of the highlights of the exhibition.
[00:03:05] It's way too massive to talk about in full, but fear not.
[00:03:08] Those are the weeks in London.
[00:03:10] You'll have a chance to see it at the Tate until it closes on the 1st of September.
[00:03:14] I know that I will be going back for sure.
[00:03:18] And those of you who are new to the podcast, welcome.
[00:03:21] It's such a thrill to see more and more of you listening in.
[00:03:24] I cannot tell you the joy it brings us to see more of you coming along.
[00:03:29] And thank you for all of those who've been spending your time with us this far.
[00:03:33] As you might know, I'm Emily Harding.
[00:03:36] I'm an art lover and an exhibition goer and a co-host of this podcast.
[00:03:41] And I am Joanna Pirnevis, your co-host.
[00:03:44] I am an independent curator and writer.
[00:03:47] And I'm delighted to continue with part two of this outstanding artist
[00:03:51] who is finally getting her due with this retrospective exhibition.
[00:03:57] Her life is so tumultuous, so rich that, of course, I was bound to get something wrong.
[00:04:03] I mentioned in the last episode that a former assistant of hers, Ann-John Lennon,
[00:04:10] had just released a documentary.
[00:04:12] Indeed, it is called The Lost Weekend, A Love Story.
[00:04:16] And I misnamed her as Amy Pank.
[00:04:19] A correct name is Mae Pank.
[00:04:21] So the documentary, if you're interested, is available on Prime, YouTube and Apple TV, by the way.
[00:04:27] And the other documentary I mentioned, and that you can watch at your own risk of extreme boredom,
[00:04:35] is called Murder Without a Trial on Apple TV about John Lennon's assassination.
[00:04:41] Resounding endorsement there, Joanna.
[00:04:45] That was... I'm sure that everyone's gonna rush off to Apple TV and watch this last one.
[00:04:50] Do you ever just like to have TV on in the background when you sort of fall asleep,
[00:04:55] maybe, for a Saturday nap on the sofa?
[00:04:57] This could be good.
[00:04:59] This could be choice-dealing for that.
[00:05:03] Yeah, this is good for insomnia.
[00:05:04] Yeah, indeed.
[00:05:07] So shall we start?
[00:05:09] Because we have a lot of stuff to cover.
[00:05:12] So going back a little before 1962, to mention very briefly the fluxus movement.
[00:05:18] When George Massunas was setting his own art space and someone told her about it,
[00:05:23] saying that he was copying her, he invited her to do a show in his gallery,
[00:05:28] where she installed her instruction paintings.
[00:05:31] One of them, Painting to be Stepped On, which is also in the Tate exhibition,
[00:05:35] was one of the features.
[00:05:37] So the instruction paintings are really interesting because they kind of celebrate,
[00:05:42] in some ways, a very traditional form of art making.
[00:05:45] And at the same time, it completely breaks down this tradition,
[00:05:49] particularly painting to be stepped on.
[00:05:52] She remembers Noguchi, who's this really important Japanese artist,
[00:05:58] stepping on them in these very traditional, nice slippers, she calls them.
[00:06:06] And lots of people stepped on that painting.
[00:06:08] And I wondered in the exhibition, so the painting...
[00:06:10] There's a lot of those paintings, these instruction paintings,
[00:06:14] in the second room.
[00:06:16] And I wondered, is this the original one where all these people she worked with
[00:06:22] stepped on them?
[00:06:23] Because, I mean, it looked like...
[00:06:24] I mean, it's definitely seen better days.
[00:06:26] But even still, I could not bring myself to step on it,
[00:06:30] which is silly because that's actually the instruction, of course.
[00:06:34] And this is one...
[00:06:35] You didn't?
[00:06:36] I know, I didn't.
[00:06:37] It's just one of the reasons I need to go again.
[00:06:39] I so did.
[00:06:40] As you should.
[00:06:42] But I read something interesting about this piece in the New Yorker article
[00:06:45] by Louis Menand in...
[00:06:48] It was written in 2022 and he writes,
[00:06:50] painting to be stepped on resonates in two traditions.
[00:06:53] It alludes to the widely known photographs published in the late 1940s
[00:06:58] in life and elsewhere of Jackson Pollock making his drip paintings
[00:07:02] by moving around the canvas spread on the floor.
[00:07:05] These photographs representing painting as performance inspired artists for decades.
[00:07:12] And the second context identified by the art historian,
[00:07:16] Alexandra Monroe, is Japanese.
[00:07:19] In 17th century Japan, Christians were persecuted and one way that they used to identify them
[00:07:26] was to ask them to step on images of Jesus and Mary.
[00:07:30] And the procedure was called stepping on.
[00:07:34] So people who refused would be tortured and sometimes executed.
[00:07:38] So in this way, because it has references to both Eastern and Western culture,
[00:07:45] painting to be stepped on is a grapefruit, which is her recurring theme.
[00:07:51] That we'll talk about later.
[00:07:52] That's very interesting because she's 91 years old by the way.
[00:07:56] I think I don't think he said that.
[00:07:57] She was born in 1933 and she's an iconoclast
[00:08:01] because she is too Eastern in the Western world,
[00:08:05] too Western in the Eastern world.
[00:08:07] She's never where she should be and she's really very naturally rebellious.
[00:08:13] So that's a really interesting reference actually.
[00:08:16] Also, Alexandra Monroe has a really good interview,
[00:08:21] Great Women Artist podcast about Yoko Ono.
[00:08:24] If some of you, some of our listeners want to dig into Yoko Ono a little bit more,
[00:08:29] it's a really interesting episode.
[00:08:31] So just to finish off with, finish off, just cancel out the fluxus movement.
[00:08:38] But I think it's an interesting reference because she did dabble.
[00:08:43] So Miss Yuna's disgust and need to have a name for the movement.
[00:08:47] So the movement had no name by that time.
[00:08:49] The movement was inspired by the anti-establishment of daddaiism amongst other things.
[00:08:55] She rebellious as ever, as I said, was against the idea of a movement.
[00:08:59] But he still talked about this with her and he showed her the words fluxus.
[00:09:05] So it has many meanings in the dictionary and he pointed out flushing.
[00:09:09] And actually in one of her concert pieces, there's a flushing toilet.
[00:09:14] So she probably also liked the sound.
[00:09:16] She uses the flushing toilet sound quite a bit.
[00:09:19] These movements that were so outside of the box and outside of convention
[00:09:24] and didn't want to belong to the conventions of the art world,
[00:09:28] they always existed even though you have the avant-garde.
[00:09:31] They would still show in galleries, but here Miss Yuna's was creating his own gallery.
[00:09:36] Yoko Ono was creating her own space.
[00:09:38] You made the point that she is an event organizer and that's exactly what it was.
[00:09:43] So fluxus would become an international movement where authorship was irrelevant
[00:09:51] and the art object was considered a commodity.
[00:09:54] This was not again, I highlight this, it was not the first time
[00:09:58] that this was an important point for a movement.
[00:10:02] But I think in the heights of capitalism, after the 50s, it is important to go back
[00:10:10] to that notion that artistic practices are not always objects oriented and object driven.
[00:10:18] And even if they are objects, that's not the point.
[00:10:21] It's the twoing and throwing between the spectator and the object
[00:10:24] or the art object that is the important thing.
[00:10:27] So the artwork had to be ephemeral, non-traditional, non-commercial, etc.
[00:10:31] It was a radical and collective endeavor, which is really important.
[00:10:37] Certainly the most extreme of the 60s as a movement, as a collective movement.
[00:10:42] John Cage was, as ever, a great inspiration.
[00:10:46] And I think we have mentioned John Cage in every episode of the podcast.
[00:10:52] I think we're renaming this to the John Cage podcast.
[00:10:56] Who did he inspire and what major solo exhibitions are they having, essentially?
[00:11:02] But war has also been a huge feature.
[00:11:04] I mean we could reposition this as the Cage art war podcasts.
[00:11:09] If you think of Dido, Moriyama, you think of Richter, you think of Philip Guston even.
[00:11:17] I mean Marina Abramovich, different war but very, very...
[00:11:21] Different wars, yes.
[00:11:22] A lot of artists have this connection to
[00:11:26] this moment that kind of broke the 20th century.
[00:11:29] I have a quote by Yoko Ono about John Cage that is really interesting.
[00:11:34] So she says, I don't really feel close to John Cage's music.
[00:11:39] He's interested in this loud sound, you know, in a concert.
[00:11:44] I don't understand why because that distracts me from hearing the mind sound.
[00:11:50] So I think that really clarifies her relationship to music and her relationship to music as
[00:11:57] kind of the drawing of imagination, drawing in the sense of kind of like to pull and push
[00:12:03] and to move things around and rhythms and patterns.
[00:12:07] But also of the artwork as an incredibly individual experience.
[00:12:12] We talked about her work being about togetherness.
[00:12:15] But this togetherness she builds is very much built on a work on the ego, you know.
[00:12:23] I think that's the only way I can try to explain it.
[00:12:26] So anyway, her relationship with Toshi Ichinagi was turning sour.
[00:12:33] So she had... I mean, this is a pattern all throughout.
[00:12:35] She had several liaisons including with Le Monte Young because Chamber Street was
[00:12:39] actually organized with Le Monte Young.
[00:12:41] And so that's why her parents were so concerned that they kind of sent a person to escort her
[00:12:49] to Tokyo in 1962.
[00:12:51] So it was kind of her parents doing that she went back to Tokyo.
[00:12:55] But she was very glad she did because she did say that had she'd said in New York,
[00:13:00] she would have been this kind of like con madam of avant-garde and would have just
[00:13:05] repeated herself and she's not interested in that.
[00:13:08] Oh, so after the very ambivalent criticism of her big concert, she did another work
[00:13:17] which is called Cut Piece, which is also in the exhibition.
[00:13:21] And that's a really, really important work.
[00:13:24] I don't know if you want to introduce the work.
[00:13:26] Yeah.
[00:13:27] Cut Piece.
[00:13:28] For sure, yeah.
[00:13:29] So Cut Piece is a performance where she sat on stage while she allowed attendees to come
[00:13:35] up on stage and cut pieces of her clothing off with scissors.
[00:13:39] So Marina Abramovich, surely must have seen this and been inspired because it's,
[00:13:44] you know, it is that kind of performance that is, you know, a little bit dangerous.
[00:13:50] I mean, certainly very vulnerable for Yoko Ono as the performer.
[00:13:54] So she would wear her best clothes for the show as an offering to participants.
[00:14:00] And this comes from a Buddhist teaching as well that encourages doing the most embarrassing thing
[00:14:06] in order to break down your ego.
[00:14:08] And I mean, she, you know, the way that you see it at the exhibition,
[00:14:14] it's obviously a video of her having done this previously.
[00:14:19] And you see people kind of going up and clipping, you know, very modest portions of her
[00:14:25] look like some kind of Chanel suit or something like that.
[00:14:29] And taking it away.
[00:14:31] And then there's kind of a man who comes up towards Yann and just starts hacking off
[00:14:37] so that then she is much, much more exposed.
[00:14:40] And there's a lot of audience participation.
[00:14:42] And she has to cover her breasts.
[00:14:44] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:14:46] And there's, you know, a lot of audience, I mean, this is all about audience participation.
[00:14:52] I mean, they are creating the art as it were.
[00:14:55] But there's a lot of disagreement in the audience about, no, don't do that.
[00:15:01] Don't, you know, kind of, you know, towing and froing.
[00:15:04] But it's that, you know, it enters into that, you know, discussion about complicity,
[00:15:10] you know, stripping a woman naked on a stage, which she's inviting you to do.
[00:15:16] In 1964, mind you, this was not in 2024.
[00:15:22] This, by the way, took place at the Contemporary American Avant-Garde Music
[00:15:27] Concert in Sound and Instructure, Yamayachi Hall Kyoto on the 20th of July and of 1964.
[00:15:36] And what is interesting as well in regards to all of her major works
[00:15:42] is that the way she explains it changes across time.
[00:15:46] And also the way it starts is not how it is perceived nowadays.
[00:15:52] So now it's considered to be a precursor of the piece Rhythm Zero of Marina Abramovich
[00:15:58] that we talked about in the first episode, whereby she had a table with lots of objects,
[00:16:03] some of them dangerous, some of them nice, some of them nourishing.
[00:16:09] And people would use those objects on her.
[00:16:11] And she ended up being threatened by a man with a revolver that was there
[00:16:15] because she had placed a revolver and a bullet on the table.
[00:16:19] And this was much later, this was in 1972, if I'm not mistaken.
[00:16:25] And so this piece was about 10 years before.
[00:16:31] And it is perceived as a very feminist humanist piece
[00:16:36] where the audience is made responsible of whatever happens to the performer.
[00:16:43] But for her, I have a quote about this piece.
[00:16:48] And she says, it was a form of giving, giving and taking.
[00:16:53] It was a kind of criticism against artists
[00:16:57] who are always giving what they want to give.
[00:17:01] I wanted people to take whatever they wanted to.
[00:17:04] So it was very important to say, you can cut wherever you want to.
[00:17:09] So that takes us to a whole other direction.
[00:17:13] It takes us again, obviously, to the sense of responsibility,
[00:17:17] but it also takes her to the notion of the artwork.
[00:17:20] So as you said in part one, and I think very rightly so,
[00:17:25] for her, it's all about abandoning her own wants and needs in a very Buddhist sense.
[00:17:31] It's all about putting the artwork in the hands of people.
[00:17:35] And I think that's why she talks about her pieces in very different ways
[00:17:40] because she's at different times in her life.
[00:17:43] And she sees them differently and they're complex.
[00:17:46] They are nuanced.
[00:17:47] They're not just one thing and one message.
[00:17:51] And so it makes for a really interesting take on whatever she was doing.
[00:17:56] It's a very generous piece.
[00:17:58] Take whatever it is you'd like.
[00:18:00] I mean, if you'd like to sit here and watch,
[00:18:03] if you'd like to participate, if you'd like to
[00:18:07] hackle people who are doing something that you think is not right.
[00:18:10] I mean, she's creating a lot of space for people to have their own agency
[00:18:16] in relation to the artwork.
[00:18:17] And it's kind of destructive.
[00:18:19] It's interesting because we will talk about this a bit later on when she comes to the UK.
[00:18:24] She comes for a sort of a symposium,
[00:18:28] conference organized by Gustav Metzger about destruction in the art world.
[00:18:34] And you can also see her kind of chipping away at the conventions of the art world
[00:18:40] and the exhibition space because exhibition, to exhibit yourself,
[00:18:45] she's actually exposing herself or letting others expose herself
[00:18:50] in her nakedness and her rawness as an embodied being.
[00:18:55] So it's quite complex actually and there's no single way to look at this piece.
[00:19:01] And that's why it's so, so interesting.
[00:19:03] So by this point, she still considered herself as an outsider.
[00:19:08] Her gender was isolating.
[00:19:10] There weren't many women out there in the Japanese avant-garde.
[00:19:13] She didn't want a conventional role of mother or wife.
[00:19:16] Her marriage came to an end.
[00:19:19] But what happened here is very surprising when,
[00:19:23] in the way we talked about Yoko Ono, which is that she was really, really in a bad way.
[00:19:30] And she tried to commit suicide and she was institutionalized.
[00:19:35] So by that time, she was very, very, very alone.
[00:19:40] And there's a whole myth around this period in her life because someone comes up
[00:19:47] when she is in an asylum, in a psychiatric ward,
[00:19:53] and a strange man, Anthony Cox, sort of maverick musician
[00:19:58] and notorious drug taker apparently, he was one of the first people to take LSD,
[00:20:04] just comes and saves her.
[00:20:07] Yeah. Wow.
[00:20:09] What a man, what a guy like Hannah Gatsby says.
[00:20:13] So he came and just kind of took care of her.
[00:20:17] He heard about her, so he came to Japan, stayed with her in Japan for quite some time.
[00:20:22] And in his honor, we can say that he was very supportive of her
[00:20:27] and helped her publish her major opus, Grapefruit,
[00:20:32] which is a book of instruction-based art, a really important book
[00:20:37] that included the instruction paintings and included lots of instructions that were
[00:20:44] near impossible, if not completely impossible to make or to realize.
[00:20:50] And she, and the name, and I wondered this for so many years,
[00:20:55] why is this book called Grapefruit?
[00:20:58] But you never forget the title, do you?
[00:21:00] I mean, it's impossible not to remember that such a book is called Grapefruit.
[00:21:05] Such poetic license is quite, I find, admirable.
[00:21:10] And actually she identified with Grapefruit because it's a fruit that is midway between
[00:21:18] an orange and a lemon.
[00:21:20] And she's also a hybrid of two cultures.
[00:21:22] So that's how she saw herself and that's why she called the book Grapefruit.
[00:21:27] The critic David Burden wrote in The Times,
[00:21:31] Grapefruit is one of the monuments of conceptual art of the early 60s.
[00:21:35] So this is nice to know at least, she has some recognition.
[00:21:40] Ono has a lyrical poetic dimension that sets her apart from the other conceptual artists.
[00:21:47] Her approach to art was only made acceptable when white men like Joseph Casute and Lawrence
[00:21:52] Vena came in and virtually did the same thing as Yoko but made them respectable and collective.
[00:21:59] Going back to what you said a little bit ago about how she was happy that she went back to Tokyo
[00:22:06] because the avant-garde scene there really opened things up for her in a way that she didn't think
[00:22:12] that she would have opened up if she was in New York.
[00:22:14] I think that's a remarkable thing to say when you really look at what happened.
[00:22:18] I mean, essentially your parents kidnapped her back to Tokyo, put her in an institution.
[00:22:24] She was kind of released by this guy through the help of this guy who ended up becoming her husband
[00:22:32] and who ended up doing some pretty despicable things later on.
[00:22:37] This optimism, maybe there is a whole library of articles where she just laments all of that
[00:22:46] but I haven't come across any of that.
[00:22:48] Not that I know of.
[00:22:50] She looks back on that period as wow, I really developed a lot as an artist
[00:22:55] and doesn't sort of dwell on the trauma of it.
[00:23:00] I forgot to mention that before her breakdown actually she was very good friends with Namjoon
[00:23:08] Paik who's a really, really important artist in the American and Japanese art scene because he
[00:23:14] developed conceptual work through technology, so through the use of televisions and lots of
[00:23:20] radios and transmission, broadcasting, all of it.
[00:23:25] And so she participated as well in experimental activities with the group Ongaku
[00:23:31] and Namjoon Paik keeping a link with Fluxus.
[00:23:37] She also made this artwork called I think pieces of the future where she would break milk bottles
[00:23:48] because by the time people were delivered milk bottles every day in the morning and there's
[00:23:53] shards of milk bottles with the dates, future dates.
[00:23:57] And she would sell them, she sold them somewhere in a festival or something in Japan
[00:24:03] and the only person who bought a piece for 500 yen was Namjoon Paik.
[00:24:07] So she was always in, I think she had the recognition and I think she was an artist,
[00:24:13] artist basically by this point because she was a woman.
[00:24:17] You know there's no other explanation because Namjoon Paik went on to have a brilliant career,
[00:24:22] you know super Uber recognized.
[00:24:24] So yes as you said going back to this mysterious Anthony Cox, a horrible thing that happened
[00:24:31] was that she had a child eventually with him, Kiyoko.
[00:24:35] So after things go sour which of course they would eventually do because Cox had a very
[00:24:42] kind of erratic kind of life and habits, drug habits.
[00:24:48] You know they moved to New York with Kiyoko so Kiyoko's born in Japan,
[00:24:52] they moved to New York with her and eventually when they separate Anthony Cox takes Kiyoko,
[00:24:59] he joins a cult and he forbids Yoko Ono to have access to her for many, many, many decades.
[00:25:07] I actually hadn't realized that she had had a kid before the one she had with John Lennon,
[00:25:13] Sean you know and seeing some of the art that she made in Kiyoko's honor,
[00:25:19] I mean it's just really heartbreaking and it looks like after she got together with John Lennon
[00:25:26] they tried to see the daughter and tried to, but then you know she just kind of went off into this
[00:25:36] cult and I think they were there for like 10 years and then Anthony Cox and Kiyoko left that
[00:25:41] cult but they were still in some kind of really fundamentalist Christian sect.
[00:25:48] So she didn't see her again until the 90s.
[00:25:50] I mean, I just can't imagine how painful that must have been.
[00:25:57] And isolating because who can understand and who could not blame the mother in that period
[00:26:05] for something like that? She could not confide in anyone because she would always be seen as a
[00:26:10] bad mother even now. Can you imagine then you know an artist, an independent woman who was
[00:26:16] still making her art and who was still successful in traveling, who had a child somewhere and wasn't
[00:26:22] like crying her eyes out and frantically trying to kidnap her from the father you know. And at the
[00:26:32] time you didn't have the resources you have now you know and she also had the child in Japan,
[00:26:37] she was a foreigner so she had no rights in the United States. Everything was against her
[00:26:42] to get her daughter back but who would have wanted to understand that? I don't think a lot of people
[00:26:48] would have been very understanding. Anyway, so she reenacted a lot of her works in New York,
[00:26:53] so cut piece, morning piece, so the bottle shards. She also sold them in I think New York and
[00:27:01] the top of some building and she did also do back piece as well where two performers take
[00:27:09] off their shoes, climb into a burlap bag where they take off their clothes and move around
[00:27:15] which is also a work that is in the exhibition. It is yeah. So did you do bagpice while you were
[00:27:23] there? Well it was so cute, it was cute alert. When I got there I so I was with my parents
[00:27:35] so it was my birthday and I had asked that my parents would come with us. That was my
[00:27:42] birthday request because my mum has mobility issues, she had a knee operation and so we booked
[00:27:48] taxis to go to come back but I really wanted them to be there with me and my three boys
[00:27:54] unfortunately my daughter couldn't come because she was working so the whole family
[00:27:57] was there except for Constança which was you know such a pity but anyway. She had grapefruit,
[00:28:03] I gave her grapefruit when she was a teenager and she's held it, she's held on to it since
[00:28:09] even when I was preparing this she held on, she held on to it. So that was really cute but I
[00:28:17] was really worried about my mum and so I carried this foldable chair in the exhibition space,
[00:28:23] I really worried and so I followed them, I didn't read any texts, I just followed them
[00:28:30] and you know spend time where they would spend time and they were just really interested looking at
[00:28:35] the staff and looking at the paintings that you have this that noise of the nailed painting
[00:28:41] where you know there's always someone like banging you know on a nail
[00:28:46] and so there's it's really noisy, it's really chaotic and we're going to the third room
[00:28:51] where you have back piece number 31 and I see two kids performing it and lots of people around it
[00:29:01] just with the biggest smile on their faces they look like caterpillars, it was such a cute thing so
[00:29:08] my parents look at that and then there's cut piece right next to it and then I got completely
[00:29:13] distracted by the kids obviously I stayed for quite a while then my children came over
[00:29:19] we were all like looking at each other going like oh this is so nice and so beautiful in terms of sculpture
[00:29:26] and performance and dance was such a mesmerizing thing to look at and also ideal for Yoko Ono, there's no
[00:29:34] um it was just spontaneity, there was no know-how or or attempt to be beautiful or to do some kind
[00:29:44] of dance moves it was just an experiment and it was just an experience and then I thought oh my parents,
[00:29:50] my mom probably needs to sit down and I see them and they were just mesmerized by cut piece
[00:29:58] they were looking at it and they just looked at me and they were like oh my gosh I mean this is
[00:30:03] so incredible when did she do this so we started talking about it so it was really beautiful
[00:30:10] it was a really beautiful experience of the exhibition to go with your whole family
[00:30:15] my parents don't really read English that well so I decided not to read the text and just
[00:30:21] be there for them but I would completely lose track of them because I got distracted by the
[00:30:27] works and I just had this experience of being letting myself be attracted to whatever was calling
[00:30:32] me and then suddenly thinking oh my mom and just running off and giving her the chair she never
[00:30:39] used the chair not even once she had the biggest smile on her face my parents were delighted they
[00:30:46] were so happy I hadn't seen a smile on her face like that for a very long time outside of the
[00:30:53] family and you know our own stuff here at home she was so happy my dad was so happy
[00:30:59] they were just having the time of their lives was so fantastic that's so nice what a great
[00:31:05] birthday gift I mean is there a better one yeah especially when you get to the end of the
[00:31:09] exhibition but we'll talk about that later oh gosh yeah boy that's a good yeah definitely
[00:31:14] good one to go with your mom for sure you know so when I went to the exhibition it was late
[00:31:20] so it was after work I didn't have a ton of time and it's huge so I was kind of a little bit
[00:31:26] worried about seeing as much as I could see and when I got to bag piece it was just the
[00:31:32] bags on the floor and then there were signs around and I was like what what is this about
[00:31:38] and then this woman just kind of got there hopped in and was doing very yoko owner like kind of you
[00:31:45] know just sort of you know just throwing shapes you know and then she did a little bit of rolling
[00:31:52] around and it was so cool I mean it's how could you not watch that you know I mean how could
[00:31:57] that not be anything other than captivating and it was really cool but I mean what I loved about it
[00:32:03] though was you know she wanted people to experience a world without race or gender or ethnicity and
[00:32:11] allow people to feel what that would be like to not have that be the first thing that you perceive
[00:32:19] about about you and there's some great YouTube videos where she's performing bag piece while the
[00:32:29] plastic ono band is playing so you see like John Lennon yes and the band they're on stage
[00:32:35] and then she you watch her just like you know kind of take your shoes off and then go to the front
[00:32:41] kind of somewhere in front of the amps and just get in the bag and just start doing her
[00:32:48] thing you know and I just think like what must that have been like for the audience it's like
[00:32:55] for a lot of people they're there because John Lennon is there playing the guitar and singing
[00:32:59] is that you know for sure yes and then she's just going off on this bag piece you know kind
[00:33:05] of tangent yeah just google yoko owner on youtube and you find the most incredible things and I
[00:33:12] have to say I'm really I'm in awe of her because being in that space where you know that people
[00:33:21] are coming to see your husband to see the celebrity the Justin Bieber of the moment yeah and you're
[00:33:29] bringing in the most awkward bizarre actions and happenings into it and you know that people
[00:33:38] are criticizing you by then people probably also have been there for her but not with good sentiment
[00:33:45] yeah and and also lots of fans I think as she has an interview on youtube with the singer of the
[00:33:51] b52s who imitates the little screams that yoko ono does in such a perfect way that yoko was like
[00:33:58] oh my god you're good that's exactly it and the b52s they loved yoko ono's music of course
[00:34:05] she had fans but again artists performance and I admire maybe because I identify with that a little
[00:34:13] bit this idea of not wanting to belong of not wanting to fit in of wanting to carve your own
[00:34:22] space in the name of something that you really believe in in the name of a form of language and
[00:34:29] a form of existence that in her mind would end all the differences while celebrating uniqueness
[00:34:38] the uniqueness she'd never you know denied her own Japanese culture or even western culture
[00:34:44] she embraced all forms of language that were given to her and that were familiar to her
[00:34:51] and carving that space for yourself in the place where you're not wanted yeah my oh my
[00:34:58] isn't that incredible yeah that is super impressive I mean the the grip brings me to tears totally
[00:35:05] totally yeah I mean it's so impressive I mean whatever you think of her work yeah whatever
[00:35:10] you think of her visual art whatever you think of her music you know and she did a lot of
[00:35:16] concessions you know she met uh John Lennon halfway she did lots of pop music which was not her thing
[00:35:23] you know and she is just in order to bring her art to the people there's an interview on YouTube I
[00:35:30] don't know who the interviewer was an American interviewer well she brought back peace a bag
[00:35:37] for herself a bag for him and I had a feeling that they had agreed that he would put himself in
[00:35:44] the bag and she would climb into the bag as well and do the interview like that and she tells him
[00:35:50] so are you not gonna use your bag and he says no no I would rather not no thank you very much
[00:35:55] I'm very comfortable as I am like really aggressive you're passive aggressive you know she's trying
[00:36:02] she keeps trying to bring her work to a sort of celebrity platform which is kind of incredible
[00:36:10] yeah so shall we talk about London because that's a big part of her life yeah definitely
[00:36:16] let's go there so in 1966 she traveled to London to participate in that art symposium I mentioned
[00:36:23] organized by the great artist Gustav Metzger so she was invited to do an exhibition as well
[00:36:30] at New Indica Gallery which was set up by John Dunbar who was married to Marian Faithful so it
[00:36:36] was kind of a big deal the New Indica Gallery was a sort of a makeshift space that connected
[00:36:43] to music as well she does seem to gravitate to popular culture and music anyway so she was right
[00:36:50] at the center of Swinging London and I haven't said this expression so many so many years I mean
[00:36:57] it's Swinging London was a thing like can you believe it now yeah and Austin Powers baby
[00:37:06] so finally we get to John Lennon this is where she met him
[00:37:10] so of course there's a lot of urban myths around this lots of stories lots of anecdotes told about
[00:37:17] this so apparently I read in the biography that John Lennon said and I quote Dunbar told me about
[00:37:26] this Japanese girl from New York who was going to be in the bag doing this event or happening
[00:37:32] and I thought hmm sex and the quote who wouldn't think of the girl in the bag and think sex you know
[00:37:42] listen it was it was there it was there for the taking so he goes to the gallery before it happens
[00:37:49] so the gallery was doing his job well you know he was inviting the celebrities you know he could
[00:37:54] potentially buy the work and bring other people and so Ono was super busy preparing the
[00:38:00] exhibition she did not want to talk to anyone so so she has one of so the pieces she showed at
[00:38:07] New Indicator Gallery are in the big big room where you have the chest the white the white chest
[00:38:15] and you have the apple on the sorts of transparent plexiglass plinso apparently he bit
[00:38:22] into the apple and she found him arrogant it was at their meeting was like in I believe
[00:38:30] 15 minutes like they went to ups and downs and controversy and kind of like finally
[00:38:37] finding a common grounds he's like I want sex and she's like you're arrogant and then
[00:38:43] then it snowballs from there somehow it snowballs from there so there was this other work in the
[00:38:50] exhibition painting to hammer which is in the exhibition at the Tate as well very audibly so
[00:38:56] um no painting to hammer a nail sorry and so he wanted to do it which made her reluctant as
[00:39:03] she wanted the works to be pristine for the opening so she answered okay you can do it for
[00:39:09] five shillings and he replied I will give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer and an
[00:39:15] imaginary nail and for her that is when they actually really met then he went up the ladder
[00:39:23] which is another work that I really really love I think it's one of my favorites
[00:39:26] so there's a ladder you go up the ladder and then there's from the ceiling hangs
[00:39:33] a magnifying glass that you use to read a word that is in the smallest print possible hanging
[00:39:42] from a painting on a painting hanging from the ceiling that just says the word yes
[00:39:48] and I heard I read or heard of another story that when he saw that he got it and he thought wow
[00:39:56] this is incredible because he was a bit afraid of like going up the ladder and just having some
[00:40:01] sort of you know aggressive thing you know shouted at him through the magnifying glass
[00:40:07] and he just found it really beautiful and he really loved it so apparently that's how
[00:40:13] they met and she claims that she had no idea who he was see I don't buy that for a moment
[00:40:21] and I've seen a lot of interviews where she's like no honestly no I had no idea I met Paul before
[00:40:27] but I had no idea who John Lennon was but I just don't believe you could have been
[00:40:32] in a Beatles saturated 60s culture and not known who he was I mean I love her to pieces
[00:40:39] I'm not buying this bit but the the yes piece and her pieces in general again very optimistic in a
[00:40:48] very pessimistic time I mean there's racial strife going on there's a war going on and a lot of the
[00:40:55] art happening at the moment was making an explicit mark on one of those themes you know and is
[00:41:04] grappling with it and I mean so I watched the Steve Martin documentary on Apple oh yeah it's really good
[00:41:12] I really enjoyed it and and it's interesting because they talk about that that's what he was doing
[00:41:17] with his comedy at the time I mean so much you think of like George Carlin Richard Pryor I mean
[00:41:25] these guys right yeah making political statements with their art very explicitly very funnily
[00:41:32] you know I mean really really humorously just just as an aside was it Richard Pryor because I
[00:41:38] watched it as well you had that joke saying like you know I don't want to be white at the
[00:41:44] moment because I mean all white people are going to the moon and I just want them to go all of them
[00:41:49] to the moon just leave us to yeah that was him that was him yeah it was so funny I
[00:41:57] I enjoy what Steve Martin was doing but some political jokes were funny
[00:42:02] no I mean yeah and all of that political stuff and this was really funny as well I mean Richard
[00:42:07] Pryor just you know side splitting but but I mean I liked that he you know he was the way he
[00:42:14] talked about his art and what he wanted to do was was not sort of joke punchline so you have
[00:42:21] this tension where the joke is happening and that tension gets released with the punchline
[00:42:26] and then everybody laughs he wanted tension the whole way out he wanted people he wanted to take
[00:42:32] out the punchline that's what he said he wanted to just abolish the punchline and you know contain
[00:42:40] the awkwardness yeah yeah totally and he you know he was doing really silly stuff he wanted it
[00:42:46] to feel like you know you're hanging out with your mates and you're just laughing for no particular
[00:42:52] reason you're just being silly and laughing and if you've seen any of his stuff well then crazy guy
[00:42:57] you know I mean that is exactly I mean Ono's work was political you know but she set out to be more
[00:43:04] joyful and optimistic and I think that yes piece is a perfect demonstration of that because it
[00:43:10] could have been very easily something about racial tension or and it could have been like that's not
[00:43:18] that that's invalid that's a very valid thing to be producing art around but yeah you're saying
[00:43:26] basically that it's not directly political in the message but I think it is political and I was
[00:43:33] thinking about Steve Martin as well that you mentioned so rightfully because he was being
[00:43:40] political as well in his actions in the way he was deconstructing that very dusty structure of laughter
[00:43:52] through TV because he was the first stand-up comedian he was doing it live no one was doing that
[00:43:58] and he was really kind of deconstructing the space for laughter when laughter would come up
[00:44:04] and kind of building into the mind of the viewer who had to decide whether that was funny or not
[00:44:11] because he was presented as a comedian and then giving you know the power to the audience as well
[00:44:19] that's such a good comparison because Yoko is doing the same because saying yes and I heard someone
[00:44:25] say that uh I think it was Sarah Marshall describing Yoko Ono's work as conceptual self-help
[00:44:35] and she said it in a nice way not like a criticism and the yes thing is kind of preempts this whole
[00:44:43] self-help movement of like say yes to everything in your life you know be affirmative but actually
[00:44:50] it resonates in a lean in it resonates in a different way because yes yes to what yes to going
[00:44:59] into war yes to you know being in the military yes to going out there and destroy the structure
[00:45:07] and showing it to the man yes to what what are you saying yes to and that is incredibly political
[00:45:14] you know without explicitly delivering a message you think of how different that would be if you
[00:45:19] climbed up there and it was no you know I mean which could also be no to war it could be a positive no
[00:45:27] no to war no to the yeah you know going and killing people no to racial injustice all that kind of
[00:45:33] stuff but but she chose yes which is a you know I think there's a lot of artists at the time
[00:45:40] that probably would have been like no we have to be no you know we have to lay down the law here
[00:45:46] but yeah I agree I think I think it is just such a simple thing but really you know complex and
[00:45:52] deep in its simplicity so anyway so John Lennon and Yoko Ono become an item she pursued him
[00:46:00] quite aggressively apparently uh but at the same time you know he took her to a studio
[00:46:06] opened the sofa bed and she said no not having it not having sex with you this way I'm not a
[00:46:10] groupie you know so she established the terms of the relationship as she was pursuing him
[00:46:16] pursuing him you know in a very Yoko Ono style and it was a brutal I have to say this to Cynthia
[00:46:23] Lennon it was brutal because he was married to Cynthia Lennon he had lived a super secluded life
[00:46:29] he was this kind of like grown child adored by everyone in the whole world and he just
[00:46:37] decided that you know he would spend time with Yoko Ono in his own home until Cynthia Lennon
[00:46:44] got back home because she had offered her I think a trip to Greece her and her son Julian
[00:46:51] and when she arrived they were there in their nightgowns sitting on the floor just talking
[00:46:57] about art and rough she just yeah and it was just the feta compoli you know there was nothing
[00:47:02] to say and he'd really behave like a big baby yeah yeah no that's awful I can imagine how how
[00:47:09] miserable that must have been for her and just cruel I mean that's a really cruel way to end
[00:47:15] a marriage that's deeply disrespectful but I mean I don't know if he was a secluded child I mean I
[00:47:20] know that he was a famous person by that point and had legions of fans that would have done
[00:47:26] anything for him and he could get anything he wanted but I mean he was born during the war
[00:47:31] and grew up with rationing his parents split his dad tried to kidnap him before he abandoned him
[00:47:37] altogether then he was raised by his aunt because his mom was mentally ill even though she continued
[00:47:44] to be like a big influence in his life she bought him his first guitar it's worse than that his aunt
[00:47:50] actually thought that he should have been her child and lied to his mom who lived not very far
[00:47:56] away from them lied to him saying that his mom did not want to see him and manipulated things into
[00:48:03] keeping him with her while being really arrogant to him and being really really abusive so I mean he
[00:48:12] had a horrible childhood yeah I mean that is really dark and then you know he had this he had
[00:48:17] this connection with his mom and then she was hit by a car and died when he was 17 I mean
[00:48:23] so he I mean he had you know this very famous lifestyle of you know the whole world of yes
[00:48:31] as it were but I mean he certainly spent some time in the school of hard knocks and I think
[00:48:37] you know there's certainly a loneliness that you can imagine from Yoko Ono in the coldness
[00:48:43] of her family the loneliness he must have felt by both parents not being available and growing up
[00:48:50] in this really weird condition with his with his aunt yeah I mean what I mean by being secluded is that
[00:48:58] he was in the rarefied air of celebrity so he could do whatever he wanted he was you know
[00:49:06] surrounded by yes people and as typically in you know the the men of the who were grown-ups
[00:49:13] in the 60s and the 70s he didn't address his personal trauma and he ended up doing the
[00:49:19] same thing that was done to him to Julian with apparently a big support from Yoko Ono which
[00:49:26] Mei-Peng talks about don't know if that's true or not doesn't really matter but so what I mean to say
[00:49:32] is that he had agency and I'm not against you know and I am actually not not only I'm
[00:49:38] I'm not against I'm absolutely forgiving John Lennon full agency because he was a powerful man
[00:49:43] but I think he also was in a situation where everything was available to him
[00:49:49] he could do anything he wanted I don't know what you think about this but I think that
[00:49:55] this celebrity thing that she embarked on was very dangerous she did her best with it
[00:50:02] dangerous in what sense I'm gonna give you an example so Arthur my 23 year old son went back
[00:50:08] to the exhibition with a friend I asked him so how did you experience the exhibition again and he
[00:50:13] said well you know yeah I mean my friend didn't really love it but we kept thinking about this
[00:50:20] bed thing they did with Yoko Ono and John Lennon and we were like who do they think they are
[00:50:26] I don't care that they're in bed together why why are we looking at them naked I mean it makes
[00:50:31] absolutely no sense and so for him this made no sense it was even a bit distasteful it didn't mean
[00:50:39] anything and it didn't change anything like you know he was like these celebrities who think they can
[00:50:45] change the world just because they say something or they have a message of some kind and and
[00:50:52] notoriously you can think of Gal Gadot with Imagine the song during the pandemic which was such a
[00:50:59] disaster so I can see how you would look at it I mean when I was a kid and I saw those you know
[00:51:09] Imagine peace and kind of the posters they put up I loved it I felt really really moved by it I
[00:51:18] mean at the time as a teenager you know kind of starting to feel some seeds of social justice
[00:51:27] start to bloom and it felt like a very simple idea that I felt was a very powerful one the fact that
[00:51:34] someone so famous was saying it and someone that you know I admired so much you know in him I wasn't
[00:51:41] as close to to her work then felt important and felt really inspiring as a kid I mean I do see
[00:51:52] that it is a very simple message but that's intentionally so you know I mean it's like
[00:51:58] there you know if you go back to what she's about which is the power of the imagination
[00:52:06] to create art and create reality in your own mind that's the most powerful thing that you can
[00:52:13] get people to do is Imagine peace and I mean granted I don't know the celebrity part of
[00:52:20] it I can see why Arta would feel that way I have a complicated relationship with celebrities who
[00:52:26] become activists and start to say things about you know international relations or the way things
[00:52:33] should be because sometimes they get it really wrong and you know they don't know really what
[00:52:38] they're talking about but at the same time you want them to leverage that extraordinary
[00:52:44] power that they have for something good they're human beings and they can have opinions about
[00:52:49] the world as they so choose but it is a complicated thing when it is mixed with celebrity and when
[00:52:56] it's mixed with kind of branding as it would be now yes which was not the case for them I mean
[00:53:05] if you watch the Maypeng documentary Yoko Ono was the person managing everything and the footage
[00:53:12] you see is really them but mostly her dealing with requests press requests um appear public
[00:53:22] appearances exhibitions pieces concerts and John Lennon we have to say this was a heroin addict
[00:53:30] by the time so was she of course obviously at the time when after he was killed everyone
[00:53:39] claimed that she was the heroin addict but he has he had a big addiction at the time so they were
[00:53:46] living a very reckless life and you can see and that's the if you turn the Amy Pag documentary
[00:53:53] on its head what happens is that Yoko Ono was completely as usual committed to art
[00:54:02] completely stifled by the relationship because she had to take care of him as well
[00:54:06] and so at a certain point she tells Maypeng listen can you please have an affair with him
[00:54:11] I can see he's unstable you're nice she was 19 I mean there was so many things wrong we don't
[00:54:17] love this but anyway spend some time I can see he likes you as if she was asking someone to
[00:54:24] to do something in order to fix him because he was not doing well and she had stuff to do
[00:54:29] she wanted to do her art it's for her it's always about her art and of course I think
[00:54:35] us commoners probably do not understand that kind of state of mind and of course if you talk to
[00:54:40] Maypeng this was completely irrational nonsensical why would a wife ask with someone to take care of
[00:54:50] of her husband but she was not a wife she didn't see herself as a wife she saw an artistic
[00:54:55] partnership that wasn't working and I think that's basically what was happening then
[00:55:01] and she really wanted to use that platform and she used it to the best of her ability and to be honest
[00:55:07] the you can see in the exhibition so that big space of the exhibition which is really really nice
[00:55:14] so chaotic so you have the pieces she did when she was in London the whole New Indica exhibition
[00:55:21] with a magnificent room with half furniture you know well everything cut in half
[00:55:27] and she was talking about this possession you know by because she was getting a divorce she also
[00:55:33] did not have a child with her I think it's a lot about that and she asked John Lennon to actually
[00:55:38] finance the the piece and he said no so they were having that kind of towing and throwing that
[00:55:44] interesting relationship and lots of the works of the exhibition are there they're super interesting
[00:55:49] and then you have a whole space with just tables with the chess piece which is basically
[00:55:55] a chess board and all the pieces are white and you can only play until you remember
[00:56:01] all the moves of the game and if and if you forget and if you can't retrace all your steps
[00:56:07] then you've lost the game brings it back to your point about Steve Martin and you know kind of
[00:56:12] taking away the punchline so the the chess board was also white so the pieces are white and
[00:56:18] the chess board is also completely white on a white table in white chairs and I think in
[00:56:22] addition she was she was talking about taking away opposition because if you unless you really remember
[00:56:30] all of your moves and pieces which is impossible like I don't know who could do that I don't play
[00:56:37] chess it's I think you can but the thing is and that takes us back to her upbringing
[00:56:44] the high achieving Yoko Ono is like you need to be high achieving as well I think there's a bit
[00:56:50] of that in the piece which I love really yeah but it also takes away the opposition I mean there's less
[00:56:57] opposition yes the competition yeah nothing nothing is there or very little is there to facilitate you
[00:57:04] actually strategizing against someone it's incredibly difficult to do when those when the
[00:57:10] when the black and white is taken away which is quite simple and powerful and it's a Buddhist
[00:57:14] thing yeah yeah yeah it's a Buddhist thing like do your best be wholeheartedly there in mind and body
[00:57:22] be in the moment be present and do it to the best of your abilities Yoko and Arta love chess I mean
[00:57:30] Arta loves chess I love chess as well but I didn't play because I was running around my mom with
[00:57:35] folding chair but so they were playing and then my parents were like looking at them
[00:57:40] and it was such a nice experience that exhibition it was really really nice and then my mom loved the
[00:57:48] piece the final one so the two final pieces after the 60s works in New Indica gallery you have this
[00:57:55] big room which was completely white as well with a boat and you can I think only 15 people
[00:58:05] can be in there did you experience it my mom went straight in there yeah so it's yeah and the boat is
[00:58:10] white as well and it's kind of like a row boat it's a very simple row boat kind of boat and everything's
[00:58:17] white and you can have um there's blue markers for people just to write whatever they'd like to
[00:58:24] so there's writing all over the boat so that it's almost completely blue or it was almost
[00:58:29] completely blue when I was there and then kind of up to the room on the floor and on the walls
[00:58:36] up to handwriting height is words images lots of them overlapping to create
[00:58:46] you know different words and images really cool I mean you know it's like a a giant coloring
[00:58:52] book for anybody and everybody to come in and color in what they wish but also with a very clear
[00:58:59] point about the refugee crisis you're basically drowning in a sea of words but before that you
[00:59:06] have the video fly which she made with the help of Maypeng and John Lennon and a whole team
[00:59:16] and I decided to go into that room with my 14 year old son about the technical caption
[00:59:23] says flies provided by New York City what really happened is that Maypeng had to actually
[00:59:30] get flies in the middle of winter so that's one of the things she was asked to do I mean they were
[00:59:36] in a sort of a another stratosphere I think and so apparently I think your co-owner wanted
[00:59:44] to be the person to do that but they ended up hiring a porn star so to lie down completely naked
[00:59:53] while the camera follows a fly just being a fly on your body and at a certain point the fly
[01:00:02] decides to go very slowly but surely onto the pubic hair of the woman and then straight into like
[01:00:13] on the lips you know nearing the vulva so and I was there with my son and I just kind of thought
[01:00:22] I'm gonna hold this moment as much as I can and we're gonna watch this together and we watch
[01:00:28] this together I mean he's seen other stuff I mean obviously my kids haven't been through a lot
[01:00:34] but he was just like there you know watching this thing
[01:00:37] and just kind of calmly taking it in we didn't talk about it because of course I was running
[01:00:42] after my mom each time I experienced any of the works and my mom said no I don't need a chair
[01:00:48] why would you ask me that and I said okay then I didn't see this one I think this is one I'll make
[01:00:55] time for when I go back well how did you find it what did you walk away with um I find it
[01:01:02] the most intriguing one because you don't know exactly I'm sure there's a very specific purpose
[01:01:08] for the work but I'm not too curious it's not one of those where I want to know what it's about
[01:01:15] it's just so strange to suddenly fixate on the fly on a human body and turn things around
[01:01:23] and see things from the perspective of the fly the film I saw was the bottoms film which is
[01:01:30] one that I think she did with Anthony Cox when she was with Anthony Cox yes and so it's comprised of
[01:01:36] close-up views of people's bottoms as they're walking so you know she kind of when you're
[01:01:43] looking at it you can't even a very famous bottoms by the way yeah yeah exactly you you
[01:01:50] can't even necessarily tell if they're male or female all the time I mean most of the time
[01:01:56] you can yes I like that and yeah and her whole point was like yeah everybody has a bum you know
[01:02:03] famous people not famous people and I kind of like that about you know that irreverence because I
[01:02:10] don't think she gets enough credit for her irreverence you know she no and her humor exactly
[01:02:16] and she gosh I was where was I reading that might have been in the New Yorker article I read
[01:02:22] where she advertised a fake exhibition at MoMA and she was like Yoko Ono is going to be at MoMA
[01:02:31] and she had these advertisements made and instead of Museum of Contemporary Art it said Museum of
[01:02:39] Contemporary Farts and you know I mean and so all these people were showing up at MoMA and MoMA
[01:02:45] apparently had the advertisement there saying you know what she's putting you on she's not here and
[01:02:52] I mean I just like well done you know I mean you know that is that's really pushing you know you
[01:03:00] talked about that earlier about how she really pushed back on the structures of the art world
[01:03:05] itself it's like you couldn't get more any blatant kind of thumb in the eye of the art
[01:03:11] world than that it's really good yeah and the the bottoms is really funny because usually you say
[01:03:19] we all have the same blood running in our veins we're all the same and she goes like we'll have
[01:03:24] bottoms guys yeah yeah we all have thumbs in our chest and souls in our bodies now she's like
[01:03:32] we all have a butt and also I like the fact that it's that place in your body that is sexual
[01:03:40] that you can use at your own will in your sexual relationships be it heterosexual
[01:03:47] you know or homosexual and it is genderless to her genderless point I think we can address also
[01:03:55] the fact that nowadays it's very hard to say look beyond race look beyond gender we are
[01:04:02] in a moment where we're reckoning with gender with race with cultural differences with
[01:04:08] appropriation I would love to know what younger generations who are fighting a lot for their
[01:04:16] bodies to be recognized as they see themselves and identify themselves as or as they are seen by
[01:04:24] you know culture society history etc how they would feel about this idea of being in a bag
[01:04:32] trying to exist in a sort of world where none of that exists because is the end point of talking
[01:04:40] about identity going beyond identity and is that what she was thinking or is the point not really
[01:04:47] addressing identity in her work and I think that's a fair question and it's a question that
[01:04:52] probably a lot of you know trans activists you know black activists could could ask
[01:04:58] because I mean that whole color blind thing we were there for a while and we thought that was
[01:05:03] the way to think about it and it's not it is not I don't see color yeah problematic and not true
[01:05:12] so tell me about your experience of the rest of the exhibition there's two very strong pieces at
[01:05:16] the end of the exhibition my mommy is beautiful yeah it's it's a bit like the wish trees so people
[01:05:22] can write notes to their mother about their mother and put them on the wall and they were just
[01:05:28] tons of notes I mean I don't know what they're gonna do are they gonna take them down so that it's
[01:05:34] they'll have to take them down at some point because if this goes on until September this whole
[01:05:39] room will be full of messages thinking about her mom and how her mom was like you're so lucky to
[01:05:47] have a beautiful mother you know I think that that you know kind of adds an interesting dimension
[01:05:53] to it I think you know how most people took it and most of the messages that I read were you know
[01:06:01] kind of my mom is the best and I love her and this is how she makes me feel and I did see one that was
[01:06:07] like my mom is an enemy and you need to keep your enemies close so there's this famous clip
[01:06:13] of Fred Rogers when he's getting I think it's an Emmy award and he's on stage he had this
[01:06:20] really famous kids TV program for years and years and years Mr. Rogers neighborhood he got up on stage
[01:06:28] and he was like actually what I want everyone to do right now is to take a moment to think of someone
[01:06:35] who's made a real difference in their lives and help them get to where they are right now
[01:06:41] in this seat in this auditorium you can feel it when you watch that clip the room it changes
[01:06:48] and the feeling in the room changes because people are all focusing their minds on something
[01:06:55] that they are grateful for and towards someone that they to whom they are grateful and I think
[01:07:01] that there's a bit of that in this room. Yeah I think Bartholomew my 18 year old son said that he
[01:07:08] hurt someone say well this is stupid because not everyone has a mother and he said well that's
[01:07:13] stupid because even if you don't have a mom you know you kind of have a relationship with someone
[01:07:21] who's akin to a mother or who's akin to a carer and you can think about carers and you can think
[01:07:27] about the fact that you don't have a mom you might have two dads and they're mothering you you
[01:07:34] know what is mothering and yeah my father's mom passed away when he was 23 years old and he
[01:07:40] loved her to pieces he had a great relationship with her and so my kids told me because I got there
[01:07:46] later than everyone else my dad wrote something and pinned it to the wall in Portuguese and then
[01:07:52] I wrote something about my own mom so I had to think about my relationship with my mother
[01:07:58] he was there so happy you know and I found something that made me really really comfortable
[01:08:04] so I felt really at peace so yeah so that's the we we got to the end of the exhibition
[01:08:09] believe it or not we thought we never would yeah it's a biggie it's a biggie but you're right in
[01:08:16] terms of my mommy is beautiful you're right not everybody does have a mother that is true
[01:08:21] and I mean there's no yeah that isn't a common denominator necessarily everybody is born
[01:08:28] through a uterus but not necessarily uh is a mother does that make her of her own time
[01:08:36] or is she trying to say something about de-gendering mothering as well again you know it's up to you
[01:08:42] to decide I have to say I'm coming I'm coming away with a very different understanding of Yoko Ono
[01:08:49] than I had going in I mean when me too when I went in as I said last time you know I didn't
[01:08:57] I didn't really get her art I didn't really you know there was the whole hangover of the
[01:09:02] Beatles all that kind of stuff I didn't really I didn't really appreciate what she was trying to do
[01:09:10] or the really revolutionary way she was trying to do it you know being the person that she is and
[01:09:17] in the time that she's lived but I I'm coming away with yeah just a lot of admiration and respect
[01:09:24] for what she has done as an artist yeah me too me too and she's still going she's 91 and she's
[01:09:33] still going I mean god love her I want to be just like that my goodness I mean she's still wearing
[01:09:40] her funky sunglasses and her life before you kind of think that what a resilient human being she is
[01:09:47] you know imperfect being she's not a perfect human neither are we you know far from it indeed speak for
[01:09:55] yourself come on let's wrap it up yeah I mean I'll just say there's a huge portion of her life obviously
[01:10:01] that we have not covered in as much detail as we have kind of the beginning of her life until
[01:10:06] she got together with Lenin but there's loads of available resources online so do go check it out
[01:10:13] and do check out this exhibition if you can it's really really worth it our next episode is going
[01:10:19] to focus on Aria Dean's exhibition at the ICA so if you have time go and see it because that's
[01:10:27] going to be our next episode but yeah so thanks so much everybody for listening take care and
[01:10:32] have a great week and don't forget we visit exhibitions so that you have to so go out there
[01:10:38] and visit some shows take care all right bye Joanna bye Emily