4.29.2012
Yoko Ono
Cut piece - 1965
Yoko Ono first performed ‘Cut Piece’ in 1964 in Japan. She repeated the performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1965. In September of 2003 she performed the piece for the last time in Paris.
The piece consists of a solitary perfomer, Yoko Ono, sitting on stage with a pair of scissors at her side – inviting the audience to come and cut off pieces of her clothing and take them away. (Audience members are given this instruction in a leaflet at the commencement of the piece.) Unflinching, she allows strangers to gradually remove portions of her clothing until there is nothing more to cut away at. The piece ends when nothing more can be cut, or when the performer decides that the piece has ended.
In her script for the piece Yoko Ono adds that the performer does not have to be a woman.
In all its manifestations, the piece is very powerful. Art historians and critics have descriped it- “more like a rape than an art performance”. Yoko Ono lies still and quiet, her eyes fixed and distant as pieces of fabric are removed from her body… first someone takes a sliver at the neck, then someone tears at an arm, then a piece is cut at her belly…and so the piece proceeds, sometimes with long pauses until somebody grows bold and proceeds again.
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