Immediately to the right of each line, random telephone numbers are embossed (but not printed), one telephone number per line, running down the entire column, subtly alerting recipients to the multi-sensory nature of the performance and exhibition. Headed "Works of Yoko Ono," it lists the works to be performed and exhibited in a column of full-justified type, with no spaces between the words, the words themselves cut off arbitrarily at the end of each line and picked up on the next. While the literature has focused on the Instructions for Paintings, Midori Yoshimoto clarifies that other works were shown in this solo exhibition as well, stating that it “included, among other works, the artist’s Touch Poems and Instructions for Paintings.” For this concert and exhibition, however, the announcement (fig. Pick out any shape in the process and pin up or place on the canvas an object, a smell, a sound, or a color that came to your mind in association with the shape.” Painting to be Constructed in your Head, for example, instructs us to: “Go on transforming a square canvas in your head until it becomes a circle. Having returned to Japan in the spring of 1962, shortly after first exhibiting the Touch Poem booklets in New York, Ono performed a concert and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings (text-only pieces) at the Sogetsu Art Center. Language, in fact, became central to Ono’s next exhibition. It bridges the conceptual and the sensory. So I thought of framing poems without words for people to get it by touch. Poem is a way of limiting the information of the Universe by framing it. I thought of creating poems you take into your body by touch. It may create a deeper intake of the information with touch rather than casting your eyes to the words. Braille is a very interesting communication method in which you use "touch" to get information. © Yoko Ono, Digital image © 2014 MoMA NY. Perhaps more importantly, in the way language per se is withheld, the Touch Poems foreground other sensory information, thus encouraging in the viewer a heightened awareness of the nature of perception itself and of the viewer's own role in constructing meaning from sensory as well as extrasensory data.įig. Is there a cast of characters, one a redhead and another with black hair? (The black hair is, in fact, Ono’s own.) Or is it talismanic? Its impenetrable mystery at once begs and defies any definitive interpretation. Only the barest hint, however, is given as to what. Similarly, the clumps of hair, in their different textures and colors, imply many different things. Though the lines imply a narrative text, it is an opaque language. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that there is nothing to be read in the tape (at least in any conventional sense) it is (relatively) smooth. At first glance, they appear to be Braille texts. In Touch Poem # 5, for example, lines of tape replaced text, and clumps of different hair glued to the pages were treated as illustrations (fig. Originally made in 1960, the Touch Poems were first exhibited in January of 1962 at New York’s Living Theater. 1) was produced in the form of small booklets. This essay explores her many and varied uses of the haptic in a series of Touch Poems and Touch Pieces in various media-and various contexts-with vastly different receptions by her many audiences.Īmong the artist’s earliest known works, her first series of Touch Poems (fig. Known primarily for her early text-based conceptual works and her proto-feminist performance work, Yoko Ono has incorporated haptic interaction (or interaction relating to the sense of touch) into her works in various media from the very beginning of her artistic career. – Christophe Cherix, co-curator, Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971 What I'm trying to do is make something happen by throwing a pebble into the water and creating ripples. The thing is to promote a physical participation that will lead you into this larger area of mind. But you have to give a tail to lead into it. The existing material in the gallery is like an elephant's tail and the larger part is in your mind. When a blind man says "what's an elephant", you lead the man to an elephant and let him grasp the tail and say "that's an elephant". I consider my shows like giving an elephant's tail.
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