Yesterday I had a seminar with students on two artists working with body art during the 1960s and 1970s, Vito Acconci and Hannah Wilke. But we also watched a performance by Yoko Ono, the famous Cut Piece filmed in New York in 1965. You can see the same 8 minutes of the performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJ3dPwa2tI

The performance is simple when it comes to the implementation. The artists is sitting on the stage floor with a pair of scissors in front of her, and she is asking the audience to walk up on the stage and cut off a piece of her clothing. One by one people comes up to her and do this; some takes larger pieces than others, mostly they do this fast and silently, but some gets cheered and others feel the need to make a comment. When I first saw this film it felt slightly uneasy, since there seems to be so much tensions in the room. There is a sense of voyeurism that might come from the fact that I am watching it filmed, and not being part of the performance. And because of this I do not know who the people in the audience are. Are they fellow artists or friends of Ono? Is there some kind of hierarchy in the room that ranks the order of  the participation in the piece? I can only watch and listen to what happens, and the focus of the camera is very much on the reactions of Yoko Ono. She tries not to interact, but sometimes she seems amused, and sometimes she looks plain worried.

Yoko Ono did this performance for the first time in Tokyo in 1964, it became more famous when it was staged in New York and then she did it in other places. The reactions and interactions varied between the performances. In London it is reported to have become more violent, and she needed security. A performance of this kind can be read as a game or a play, where the result is the sum of the participants contributions. This piece becomes an investigation of how the audience interacts in a situation that can become violent, the moral of the participants is tested. How far will they go in getting a women undressed in a public space? Who will reveal the most of her body? Will any of them do her harm? When commenting on a much later performance of Cut Piece in Paris 2003 Yoko Ono said that is was about trust, and this was as important in post-9/11 times as it was during the 1960s.