Yesterday I attended a screening of work by Yoko Ono at the Poetry Foundation.
The introduction (and presumably the programming) was done by the editor of the magazine for poetry. The structure housing the foundation, I discovered, prides itself on its design, placing it in the precincts of extreme privilege and affluence (rather like the Graham Foundation, another essential resource for urban avant-garde practice). The first film was just documentation. I say "just" but the camera is credited to the Maysles brothers, who filmed her performance, Cut Piece. I thought of my own documentation of Carlos Salazar Lermont's performance contribution to the series, Living Architecture, last year. I compare the two only because Carlos has never expressed any interest in my video, but also because in order to get my shots I had to be all over him as he performed. The Maysles film brings to mind an image of a performance that includes a guy with a camera. Ono sat on stage as members of the audience took turns cutting pieces of her dress with a scissors she supplied . . until a guy cut her down to her bra and she sat now positioned with her hands over her breasts. It was interesting to compare this kind of performance with what I learned to admire in someone like Abramovic. It was as if Ono hadn't really envisioned what it would be like, and was taken aback even in the short period of time documented in the film that was screened. The film ends before the performance, and a viewer would not be able to envision just how Cut Piece is concluded on the basis of this film alone. I had never seen Ono's film, Fly. Can I call this concept filmmaking? Do I have to use the term "poetry" or some such similar reference to language? I imagine her asking friends to do something that sounds very odd. I want to know how the conversation went before the bed was set up and the cameraman prepared. Bernie
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