Cut Piece 1964
Cut Piece 1964 is a piece of performance art and participatory work first performed by Japanese-American multimedia avant-garde artist, musician and peace activist Yoko Ono on July 20, 1964, at the Yamaichi Concert Hall in Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the earliest and most significant works of the feminist art movement and Fluxus.
Ono has performed the work a total of six times. Based on one of her event scores, a set of instructions for a performance, Ono sat down on the stage, laid a pair of scissors in front of her and invited the audience to cut pieces of her clothing off. Cut Piece is understood to address materialism, gender, class, memory and cultural identity and has become regarded as an iconic proto-feminist work of performance art, but also has an underlying anti-war message and inspiration found in Zen and Shinto Buddhism. In addition to Ono's six performances, Cut Piece has been staged by numerous other artists and has inspired feminist and anti-war artists and collectives since it was first performed in 1964.
Description and general interpretations
Cut Piece is an event score composed by Yoko Ono, and is one of her best known works. First performed in 1964, the piece is considered an early example of performance art. Part of the intention behind her event scores is that the work may be performed by anyone and Cut Piece has been performed by many artists of both genders. The score instructs the performer to sit onstage and remain motionless as audience members approach and cut pieces from the performer's clothing. Important to the creation of meaning in Cut Piece is the idea of reception theory, the idea that the viewer plays as much of a role in investing a work of art with meaning as the artist does. Indeed, because of the work's relative ambiguity, it elicits many readings, some intended by Ono herself and others inferred by the audience, other artists and historians considering gender, national identity, memory and historical context. Based on the nature of the interaction between Ono and audience members during performances in New York and London, many have interpreted it as a proto-feminist work addressing issues of gender based violence and objectification and subjugation of women.Cut Piece also explores the relationship between artist, artwork, and viewer. The work raises questions about the relationship between audience and artist, by basically making the audience into collaborators. Because of the ambiguity and potential for chance, there is an opening that allows for the creation of multiple meanings. Each performance varies based on the tenor of the audience. Some performances move slowly and others at a quick pace. Some people cut gently and others are more aggressive. In 1966 she wrote about her experience of the London performance, "People went on cutting the parts they do not like of me. Finally there was only the stone remained of me that was in me but they were still not satisfied and wanted to know what it’s like in the stone."
According to Julia Bryan-Wilson, Cut Piece consists of three interlinking gestures: the invitation, the sacrifice, and the souvenir. The invitation happens when Ono invites the audience to participate, in fact to perform the piece by approaching the stage and cutting a piece of her clothing. Ono has said that she always wore an outfit of her best clothing for the performance so it would be a true offering. This surrender of Ono to the audience's cutting signifies the sacrifice. The souvenir lies in the audience being asked to keep the piece of fabric or as in the 2003 performance, to send it to a loved one, an act of sharing and continuing remembrance.
Event score
The event score for Cut Piece was printed in the program for the Yoko Ono Farewell Concert: Striptease Show at the Sogetsu Kaikan Hall in Tokyo in 1964, along with scores of several other works performed that night. The score was also included in her 1964 book, Grapefruit.Cut Piece average time: 30'
First Version for single performer:
Performer sits on stage with a pair of scissors in front of him.
It is announced that members of the audience may come on stage – one at a time – to cut a small piece of the performer's clothing to take with them.
Performer remains motionless throughout the piece.
Piece ends at the performer's option.
Second version for audience:
It is announced that members of the audience may cut each other's clothing.
The audience may cut as long as they want.
An addition is made to the score published in the 1971 reprint of Grapefruit adding that "the performer, however, does not have to be a woman". While there are two versions here, Ono seems to have only staged iterations of Version 1, which is the most well known version.
Performance art and relationship between performer and audience
In performance art the artist or performer assumes the role of the art object. In most performances, there is an implied mutually understood relationship between the spectator and performer. Cut Piece is unique in that this agreement is constantly negotiated because of the intense level of audience participation and direct interaction with the performer required and there is always the threat that one party can overstep the agreed upon boundaries. Cut Piece effectively inverts the relationship of performer and spectator. In Cut Piece, Ono remains passive and silent and the audience is invited to cut away a piece of her clothing. In order for the work to be successful the audience must participate, making them responsible for their own experience, and indeed the progression and tone of the performance as well.In this work Ono assumes the role of an "othered" exotic body as well as victimized woman. Cut Piece partially relies on the audience and their participation to create meaning in the work, which is where the success of the work lies, in the ambiguity and shifting meanings found in the work through revisiting the various performances and the different way in which the audience interacts with Ono and one another. In fact, Cut Piece redefines the relationship of and blurs the roles of the performing body and interpreting audience by essentially turning the audience into performers themselves. In the case of Cut Piece, the work would not be possible to stage without the mutual performance between the artist and audience. Ono is eliciting a specific performance from the audience members through her instructions, the atmosphere and context she has constructed for the event to take place in. This mode of performance most likely would have been completely new to the audience during the time of the first stagings of the piece in 1964.
Documentation also played an important role in the future reception of Cut Piece and our understanding of the artist/audience relationship. During all of the performances, Ono invited photographers and filmmakers to document it. This differs from other performance artists of this era who wished for their work to remain ephemeral, only existing in the time frame that they were performed in. Since Ono's work is concerned with memory, memorializing the event and carrying this memory into the future, the documentation of the work and the power of the photograph to carry the message forward was important to the work.
As Clare Johnson notes, many of the photos of the event depict a calmly seated Ono while an audience member snips a small piece of her clothing away. However the photos and film by the Maysles brothers also remind the viewer of the potential for violence during the performance due to the uncertain relationship between viewer and artist. The photos "contribute to the interpretation of this work as primarily about gendered violence". Ono's control is asserted through her calmness and stillness. She creates a space of possibility and the camera was an integral part of it, serving not only to document but as a mediator between the artist and audience in the present of the performances.
Performances
The six performance of Cut Piece differ based on the location and the audience participation. Because of its multiple iterations and how each time the work is performed it changes based on the context of time, place, audience and artist's intention Clare Johnson has described Cut Piece as representing a "series of present tenses".Kyoto 1964
The first performance of Cut Piece was staged in Kyoto on July 20, 1964, at Yamaichi Hall in Kyoto and was part of an evening of performances by Ono, Tony Cox and Al Wonderlick, titled Contemporary Avant-Garde Music Concert: Insound and Instructure. In the program, Ono identified herself as an "American avant-garde musician".Ono sat alone cross-legged on the stage in her best clothes, her long hair draped over her shoulders. The audience took turns walking up to her on stage and joining her performance, cutting off pieces of her clothing with scissors. Her expression was kept poised and silenced while her body remained motionless. For the final stage of the performance, her body was fully exposed. The audience walked down the steps clutching the remnants of her clothes and they were allowed to keep these pieces with them. As a pioneering work, Ono places the viewer in a very important position and is an important element of Cut Piece.
She performed other works that night including Fly Piece and Word of Mouth Piece, two other conceptual performances that also required the audience to participate. These pieces prepared the audience to participate in Cut Piece, engaging them in the making of the work by involving them in low stakes, often whimsical or fun activities requiring a spirit of fantasy, interaction, and imagination.
Ono recalls the long silences during that first performance and how it was difficult for people to approach the stage. There was one instance of potential violence when an audience member held the scissors out as if he would stab her. Jieun Rhee questions if this rage was directed toward Ono as a woman or as an American during a time of Japanese ambivalence toward the US due to post war politics.