Yoko Ono's " Cut Piece" (1964)
Yoko Ono is a multimedia artist, performance artist, filmmaker,
and musician. She also dedicated much of her time to being a peace activist, which
is a recurring theme in her artwork. She was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1933 to a
prestigious and wealthy family. Her early years were marked by living in the US
and Japan, and she attended prestigious schools. She trained in voice and
piano. The family returned to Japan in 1941. 1945 was a turbulent time in Yoko
Ono’s life. It was right after the bombing of Tokyo during World War 2 her
father was captured and put into a concentration camp in Thailand by the
Americans. Yoko and her mother and brother escaped to the countryside. They
would peddle their household items for food. After the war, her family was reunited,
and their wealth was restored. Yoko went back to school. Her family moved back
to New York, and she had a brief stint at Sarah Lawrence, but it wasn’t to her
liking. She fell into the Lower Manhattan art scene, which resulted in her parents
cutting her off. Yoko Ono’s life is one of many changes and ups and downs.
These experiences shaped her into a woman of strong resolve and creativity who confronted
the white heterosexual societal views towards women and Asians of the 1960s.
When
people think of Yoko Ono, they often think of her romantic involvement with John
Lennon from the Beatles. She has been called the woman who destroyed the Beatles.
Her name is often used synonymously with negative female influence on male relationships.
She has been the butte of cruel, derogatory snide towards her being a woman and
Asian. She was a proto-feminist wading through the male-dominated waters. She
is the other and the absence that men see; perhaps they even feel intimidated
and threatened.
We will
look at Yoko Ono’s performance art piece “Cut Piece,” which premiered in Kyoto, Japan, in the
summer of 1964. The performance has Yoko Ono as the subject kneeling on a stage
wearing one of her nicest outfits. She then allows the audience to come up one
by one, cut a piece of her clothes, and take it with them. Ono
explains that the performance is influenced by the story of Buddha’s journey to
enlightenment. It is a story of unconditional giving instead of conditional giving.
Ono states, "That is
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’”
(Concannon, 2008, p. 89). She allows this violation from the audience as a form
of hospitality, humility, and unconditional giving as a statement of peace. She
was poor at this time and didn’t have a lot of clothes, so she was sacrificing
herself physically and mentally. She did not state that this piece had feminist
ties until many years later. Huang (2018) states, “It circumvents persistent
Western discourses that conjoin hospitality with female sacrifice and Asian
docility (p.188).
“Cut
Piece” can be viewed as a confrontation against the Western view of Asian femininity
and hospitality. She sits in a traditional Japanese pose and is quiet throughout
the cutting of her clothes. She sits expressionless as people tug, cut, and unclothe
her. Huang (2018) argues, “Ono’s Cut Piece circulates alongside tropes of Asian
femininity as submissive and passive, as something to be seen but not heard”
(p.189). The whole process is awkward to watch as some people are rough and make
crude comments. She gives the audience a moment of ownership over her
personhood. This confronts colonist ideologies of ownership over women,
especially ones of color. They take a piece of her with them. They are
literally taking the clothes off her back. Karen Shimakawa (2002) states,
“Asian American performers never walk onto an empty stage” as “that space is
always already densely populated with phantasms of orientalness through and against
which an Asian American performer must struggle to be seen” (p.17)
I think she was
successful with being seen through this performance piece. We are still finding
relevance and creating discussions on the meaning of it. It must be noted that
this was created for anyone to do, regardless of sex and nationality. It has
been reenacted over the years, with even Yoko Ono falling back into the role of
the subject again in 2003 in Paris, France. She wanted to bring a message of
peace after the World Trade Center bombing. Ono told Reuters News Agency that
she did it “against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against
violence.” Although neither Ono nor her critics framed Cut Piece as a feminist
work in the 1960s when she first performed it, she has subsumed the subsequent
feminist interpretations of her piece into her own revised intention all these
years later (Concannon,2008, p.83).
So,
presented with the question of if I believe that Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” is
feminist, I will say yes. She confronted the Western assumptions of Asian femininity
and submissiveness. She created a space in which she saw her absence. She knelt
as a quiet but defiant force, giving bits of herself away as a reminder of
colonization—this colonization of her body and the others who were also
subjects. The endurance of violating their personal space in the name of
hospitality and unconditional giving was a statement. A statement that
continues to be discussed sixty years later.
References
[ArtCurious Podcast]. (2022, August 5). Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" (1964) [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbUdYQewpmM
Concannon, K. (2008). YOKO ONO’S CUT PIECE: From Text to
Performance and Back Again. PAJ: A Journal of Performance & Art, 30(90),
81–93. https://doi.org/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.3.81
Huang, V. L. (2018). Inscrutably, Actually: Hospitality,
Parasitism, and the Silent Work of Yoko Ono and Laurel Nakadate. Women &
Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 28(3), 187–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2018.1524619
Shimakawa, K. (2002). National Abjection: The Asian
American Body Onstage. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822384243
Comments
Post a Comment