Yoko Ono, Fly
VCU Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA, through December 23rd
This article is left in place as reference for those who have
never seen Yoko Ono's work.
Someone was guarding the chess pieces. Yoko Ono has been getting
gallery and museum visitors to interact with, change, create, play
and have fun with her artwork for 30 years, and now that I'm finally
able to see some of it in person, someone is guarding the chess
pieces.
I had been to Fly twice already, and each time, someone was
sitting in a chair to the side of the room, reading a book. In
previous visits, me and a friend of mine did not move any chess
pieces because they were so perfectly aligned... and because of the
Sitting Reader. This time I finally talked to the woman sitting in
the room.
"Do you work here? Are you guarding the chess pieces, or-"
"Yes, yes, Yoko has a lot of fans out there, and we wouldn't want
someone to try and walk away with a piece of her."
"Do you know if they played [chess] at the opening (when Yoko
attended)?"
"Oh, no, I don't think so." She stood and put her glasses away to
talk with me.
"I was looking at the pieces last time I came, and I didn't even
try to play because the pieces were so meticulously placed... At the
same time, I had to think that in a whole exhibit of interactive
pieces, and with the instructions right on the wall, she must have
wanted people to play."
"No, no, this definitely took someone several hours to set up..."
We walked over and looked at the instructions on the wall. "I think
this is an imagination piece, something you play in your mind."
After my talk with the chess guard, the room was no longer
interactive, so I moved across the hall, to one of Yoko's real
imagination pieces.
Fly Piece is a large empty white room. I think the room was about
100 feet wide and 50 feet deep. The first two times I visited the
show, I thought this was all there was to Fly Piece... Sort of fill
in the blank space with your imagination, or maybe I would run around
the room and pretend to Fly... But this time, I noticed something
more.
At the entrance to the room, in ball point pen, written in small
letters right on the wall, is the phrase "The blue room event".
Following the wall, I found other messages written on the wall. "Stay
until the room is blue", "This room moves at the same speed as the
clouds", and "this room gets as wide as the ocean at the other end".
Following the wall in the other direction brought me to "This room
slowly evaporates every day", "This room is bright blue", "the window
is 2000 feet wide", "Many rooms, many realms, in many countries in
the same space", and "Find other rooms which exist in this space".
Every phrase became so much more powerful because it was so
surrounded by... emptiness. Every statement made me see this empty
room in whole new ways.
Beyond Fly Piece, I spotted a big pile of rocks. I walked into
this room, and to either side of the rock pile was a canvas and
another pile of rocks. The canvas hanging on the right wall was
gessoed white, and the one to the left was gessoed black. Playing in
the background was the unmistakable sound of Yoko singing and
chanting. On the wall in front of me were the instructions. They told
me to make a list of sadness and make a pile of rocks corresponding
to the list. Then, make a list of happiness and make a pile of rocks
corresponding to that list. Finally, compare the piles of rocks.
Beside each canvas (one white, one black, hanging opposite to each
other, 100 feet apart) were pens and crayons, note cards, tags,
string, masking tape, glue, and hat pins.
This was obviously embraced by everyone that entered the room.
There were messages of all sorts pinned, taped and glued to the
canvases, things written right on the canvas, and right on the wall--
"Richmond is not New York"- newspaper and magazine articles hung
there, a few messages taped shut that mysteriously read "For Yoko
Only", streamers of masking tape strung to the Happy rock pile with
notes attached, and even some objects, such as a puppet that opened
his trenchcoat and flashed you if you squeezed him. The rocks in the
happy and sad rock piles (in front of each canvas) also had messages
scribbled on them, or words like "born" and "John". This is one of
the most energetic rooms I have ever entered, even though no one else
was there. People really loved this piece, as evident by the mounds
of stuff tacked to the canvases and the height of the rock piles. I
took one of the pens and wrote "I will not leave a message of
sadness, there is already too much." and pinned it to the Happiness
canvas and went on my way.
Later a friend of mine asked something like, "Now why did you
write that? That goes against the whole premise of the piece." "What
are you talking about? You don't like what I wrote?" "The whole point
of the piece is that, after you've numbered your list, numbered the
rocks, and made the piles, the fact of the matter is that they're
all just rocks and have been the whole time. Things that happen
to you just happen. It only depends on you which pile they go in." I
stand corrected. This makes me love this piece even more.
The few remaining pieces- Fly (a film of a fly walking around on
Yoko's naked body viewed threw a peephole) and Mindscale (a scale
with a key on one side and a weight on the other) were good pieces,
but did not match the energy or wonder of the others.
There was one remaining piece that I passed once already on my
way into the gallery. It was a blossoming tree, pruned and trained
down to 4 feet, sitting on a 4 foot tall pedestal. Hanging all over
the branches of the tree were hundreds of small tags blowing in the
wind under the pink flowers. A mother held her child up to hang his
tag when I came in. I read it now and it said "A Blue Power Ranger".
If you couldn't reach the tags, or the higher limbs to hang your own,
you could walk up two small white step ladders to reach them better.
Other tags said "Sex", "a world without pain" and "Follow Your
Bliss". This was Wishing Piece, and hundreds of other people had
already placed their wishes here. I finally decided to hang one of my
own. "For all -To try to be happy, -Try to help others be happy,
-hold truth sacred".
There seems to be an abundance of voices everyday screaming out
their own point of view. On talk shows, the nightly news, and
ridiculous movies of the week, we are constantly pummeled by everyone
else's message, by someone else's rage or joy. It is a relief and a
profound joy when someone finally opens there arms and says, "I want
you to speak and be heard", even if it's on a canvas that only a few
hundred people will see. People are excited by it, and they don't
hesitate to do their part.
Even though the interactive part of Play It By Trust is rather
murky (I'm not sure whether Yoko or the Gallery put that guard
there), it is still beautiful to look at. The rest of the pieces
reach out and pull you into their fun. Even my mother and father felt
compelled to hang wishes on the tree when they came to visit. If you
are able to get to Franklin Street in Richmond, be sure to see this,
and add your own voice to the show.
