In 1965 Yoko Ono ‘performed’ in Carnegie Hall. Her work was a piece where members of the watching audience came up on-stage and one by one cut off a single piece of clothing from her torso. She sits on the floor of the stage with her legs tucked under her body and these audience members begin to timidly remove the items of her wardrobe. Watching the performance, now hosted on the Bedazzled blog, elicits a cross between intrigue and horror because there is a degree to which one wants to see her reaction, but at the same time a guilt because the performance feels like a protracted sexual attack. She does nothing to deter these individuals who pick up a single pair of silver scissors from the floor and one after another cut away at her, apart from the smallest timid looking glances, becoming more aggravated when a young man cuts off much of her slip and the straps of her bra.

And as a performance piece it is clearly a success because when we see individuals coming to take part in this invited act, we the viewer judge them, considering their intentions, their perspective on what they’re doing. Naturally we suspect those women involved are interested in the act while the men are more destructively intent. Ono appears vulnerable to the men, and ambivalent even conceited toward the women. In the course of the recording she is cut down from what appears to be a well heeled young woman to become a bedraggled and washed out looking girl. The transformation is odd and compelling and certainly worth watching.

Bedazzled ‘Cut Piece’
Media Art Net: Cut Piece
ArtForum Magazine article on Yoko Ono Exhibition 2001

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