小野洋子：在舞蹈与尖叫中感受真实

    纽约报道——说小野洋子（yoko ono）的《给女高音的声音作品（voice piece for soprano）》是moma（纽约现代艺术博物馆）近期的当代艺术藏品“再度展”中最“visible（明显的、可见的）”的作品可谓是高度准确又完全错误。说它错误是因为这件作品是完全不可见的，说它准确，是因为你显然不可能错过这件作品。《给女高音的声音作品》是使观者皆来参与的作品。来博物馆参观的游人被邀请佩戴一枚麦克风站在博物馆大厅，循着小野洋子贴在墙上的指示，来“尖叫。1、迎风；2、面向墙；3、朝向天空”。这些尖叫声在那些展厅中被扩大并回荡。

    小野洋子这件创作于1961年的作品如今看来仍不失尖锐。在20世纪50年代末，她与她当时的丈夫、日本实验音乐家一柳慧（toshi ichiyanagi）跻身于当时前卫音乐家约翰·凯奇（john cage）身边的才俊群星之列，小野洋子本人则开始实验“指示作品（instruction works）”或“事件标记（event scores）”。她将其中的150件作品（包括《给女高音的声音作品》）收入她1964年的书《葡萄柚（grapefruit）》中出版。

    这次展览还展出了小野洋子的其他作品，包括小野洋子在博物馆墙壁上潦草地书写一系列信息的《私语（whisper piece）》和小野洋子自1996年以来做过很多个版本的《愿望（wish piece）》，在后者中，艺术家邀请博物馆的游客将愿望写在一张纸片上，并将这些纸片系在雕塑花园中的一棵树上。这些都是我们知道，尽管大多数人都知道小野洋子是约翰·列侬（john lennon）的遗孀并曾与之一同创作音乐，她自己同时也是一位颇有作为的艺术家。

    s= sarah douglas
    y= yoko ono（小野洋子）

    s：当我几周前参加当代艺术画廊举办的装置展开幕而来到moma（纽约现代艺术博物馆）的时候，回荡在画廊里的这些尖叫声着实让我吃了一惊，同时我也意识到这是你的作品《给女高音的声音作品》（voice piece for soprano）——通过每位美术馆参观者佩戴的麦克风在依照你的指令而发出的声音装置作品。我认为这在moma之前的展览中从未实践过。效果显然是超出想象。
    y：很激进，不是吗？

    s：相当的激进。你给的指示是“尖叫。1、迎风；2、面向墙；3、朝向天空”追溯到这件作品的创作之初1961年，你的灵感是什么？在你遇到乔治·修纳斯（george maciunas）并成为激浪派组织的组成成员，那个时期相对于你的创作并不是一个最佳时点。
    y：遇见乔治·修纳斯（george maciunas）是在我开始做像此类作品之后。灵感来源于我作为一个女性内心所感受到的非常强烈的反叛意识。这风、这墙、这天空不再只代表男性，它们有自身存在的价值，而你需要通过尖叫来表现这种对抗。

    s：作为一种反抗的形式？
    y：这就是我作为女性所想和所能做到的一种方式。如果不这么做，他们会因对情感的压抑而生病。尖叫对身体本身是非常有益的。

    s：所以这可能是一种抗议的尖叫？
    y：是的，这是一首反抗之歌。

    s：这非常契合在moma（纽约现代艺术博物馆）新装置展的主题：从过去40年到当下的所情所景，他们又是在如何塑造着艺术家的作品。就好像你在这个背景下所看见的《给女高音的声音作品》（voice piece for soprano）。
    y：在[我的书]《葡萄柚》（grapefruit）里有非常多的指令，而且我并不记得这是非常好的一本书。那时候，应该是在五、六年前，我想要在欧洲的美术馆做一件户外作品。那时我正在研究《葡萄柚》（grapefruit），然后我就想，《给女高音的声音作品》（voice piece for soprano）是可以实现的。于是我就将这个作品寄给了他们,似乎它会是一场非常成功的活动。所以我开始想,这也一定是件庞大的作品。它或许能与我的作品《切片》（cut piece）配成对儿，[在1964年首次展出的一件作品——观众轮流用一对儿剪刀不断的剪下小野洋子的衣服]，同属于反抗系列的作品。我当时就想：“哇，这真的是很棒”，但是那之后我就继续做其他的事情了。那时候，moma说他们想要展出这个作品，我说：“哦，真的吗？”因为我始终认为moma是一个非常安静的地方。

    s：现在可不一样了。
    y：用这种方式展出自己的作品我真的感觉很内疚。但我不是唯一一个选择这样做的人。我只是不想给任何人带来麻烦，尤其是那种很滑稽感觉。我想这个作品应该还是可行的。

    s：好吧，那么还想再问你，这个作品的展览效果并非由你决定，不是吗？它更应该取决于观众的反应。你刚刚也提到的《切片》（cut piece）也属于同一种情况。谈到那个部分作品的实施，你也说到会因你在不同地方的表演而出现不同的结果。我记得我读到过一些资料，日本的观众会很害羞，而在伦敦，人们会变得非常狂热，尤其是在剪下你衣服的时候几乎有点暴力的味道。随着《给女高音的声音作品》（voice piece for soprano）在moma展出——我能告诉你的是，纽约人真的想要尖叫。
    y：或许音调会有点低。起初人们真的想要尖叫，然后他们会开始想要变成一种音乐式的表达。我不知道哪种方式才能真正让你尖叫。

    s：有趣的是你在moma展出的作品包括尖叫，另一个作品却叫做《私语》（whisper piece）。你认为这两者的联系体现在哪里？
    y：非常有趣的是《私语》（whisper piece）也可能是一种尖叫，这种尖叫或许只是一种低声细语。整体而言，相对于整个星球，尖叫声也仅仅就是一种低语。在《私语》（whisper piece）中被写成的16个低语指令叠加起来，从观念上去理解就会是一个巨大的尖叫。

    s：你之前说过尖叫有益于健康。我不禁想到在上世纪70年代，你和约翰·列侬（john lennon）产生浓厚兴趣是的关于arthur janov原始的尖叫疗法。
    y：我们在英格兰生活的时候，janov给了我们他的书。约翰看着他给的书说：“原始的尖叫？那就是你！”于是我们得到了很多关于janov的书，但是这一本，因为题目叫做“原始的尖叫”，于是会认为在我们的作品和这个题目之间一定会有某种关联，所以约翰便开始阅读这本书。如果说存在关联的话，这种原始的疗法的确带给我显著的效果。我对事情总是表现的很谦逊。我不喜欢说：“他们要跟着我！”但是我也意识到用这样谦卑的方式做事情，但就女人在社会中的地位来看，我做了一件并不受欢迎的事情。所以我应该去表达属于我自己的心声。

    s：但同样也有趣的是艺术有时候会影响非艺术（non-art）的发展，像治疗技术，或是科学。
    y：的确如此。它确实非常的有趣，因为我总在用另一种方式去思考它。我认为，这样的艺术作品，如果它真的是一件好作品，一定有可以改变世界的某种东西。改变世界，你需要拥有艺术和科学的双重力量。我想它是一种融合了艺术与科学的作品吧。

    s：在你的工作中还有什么地方能够让你看到这样的关系？
    y：恩，像作品《愿望》（wish piece）。它是对事物的一种祝愿——你甚至不用写下来，然后将它放在树上或其他的地方，然而当你这么去做了，这种祝福的力量就变得更加强大起来。那么，你的愿望和其他人的愿望汇集在一棵树上的时候——也就是说，实际上这样做也是非常科学的。

    s：真的吗？那是什么感觉？
    y：祝福的共鸣将汇集于此。它不再只是刚刚浮现于脑海又转瞬即逝的愿望。你已经郑重的陈述过。并且将它放置在树上——一种显露在外的——连同其他的愿望。而且变得非常的强大。那时，他们会被送到在冰岛的和平塔[在2007年，为纪念约翰·列侬而落成的，在那里有来自愿望树汇集的超过50万的愿望]。

    s：谈到这汇集而来的声音，《给女高音的声音作品》（voice piece for soprano）已经至少被盗用过一次。在摇滚乐队音速青年（sonic youth）的1999年专辑《syr4》：其中的单曲《告别了20世纪》（goodbye to the 20th century）当时是由乐队的主唱金·高登（kim gordon）和瑟斯顿·穆尔（thurston moore'）五岁的女儿来表演的。你怎么看？
    y：从我的角度来看，我创作了最初的乐章，之后它无论走向哪里，它都是美丽如初的。我非常高兴这样的尖叫听起来像是某种乐章。

    s：几周前在moma的开幕式上，你再一次亲自演绎了这个作品。这对你意味的是什么？这次表演还会像你当初第一次表演那样让你感到彻底吗？
    y：的确如此。在我的内心有太多的情感。当我看到麦克风时，我就感觉我要这样做。通常我认为那才是真实的我。当我听到音乐的时候，我的身体会伴随音乐而舞动。在舞蹈与尖叫中：我知道，那就是我。
^^
    new york— to say that yoko ono’s voice piece for soprano is the most visible artwork in moma’s recent reinstallation of its contemporary art galleries is both unimpeachably accurate and totally wrong. wrong in the sense that the piece is not visible at all; right in the sense that you can’t possibly miss it. voice piece for soprano is a participatory artwork. museum visitors are invited to take a microphone in the museum's atrium and follow ono’s instructions, posted a wall, to “scream. 1. against the wind; 2. against the wall; 3. against the sky.” the resulting screams are amplified throughout the galleries.

    as zeitgeisty as the piece seems (there is much to scream about these days, from the oil spill on down to tea party antics), ono created it back in 1961. in the late 1950s, she and her then-husband, japanese experimental musician ichiyanagi toshi, became part of the constellation of creative types around avant-garde musician john cage, and ono began experimenting with “instruction works” or “event scores.” she published more than 150 of them, including voice piece for soprano, in her 1964 artist’s book grapefruit.

    voice piece isn’t the only artwork of ono’s on view at moma right now. the reinstallation’s organizers — moma associate director, kathy halbreich, and curator christophe cherix — have also included whisper piece, a series of messages ono has scribbled on the museum’s walls, and wish piece, which ono has been creating in various versions since 1996, and which invites museum visitors to write their wishes on a piece of paper and place these on a tree in the sculpture garden. in fact, the presence of ono’s work in the show turns out to be one of its highlights — so visible is she in new york as john lennon’s widow and onetime musical collaborator that it is sometimes easy to forget that her career as a conceptual artist in her own right both pre- and post-dated her marriage to the former beatle. ono spoke with sarah douglas about protest songs, the power of wishing, and how a whisper can sometimes be a scream — and vice versa.

    when i went to moma a couple of weeks ago for the opening of the reinstallation of the contemporary art galleries, i was taken aback by all these screams echoing through the galleries, and realized it was museum visitors taking the microphone for your voice piece for soprano. i don’t think moma has ever done anything quite like this before. the effect is dramatic. 
    it’s pretty radical, don’t you think?

    absolutely. the instructions you give for the piece are: “scream. 1. against the wind; 2. against the wall; 3. against the sky.” what was your inspiration for this, back in 1961? wasn’t that right around the time you met george maciunas and became part of the fluxus group?
    i met george maciunas after i started doing things like this. the inspiration was that i was feeling very rebellious as a woman. the wind, the wall, the sky didn’t represent men, but they were situations in life that you have to scream against.

    as a form of resistance?
    that’s exactly what i thought of women doing. if they don’t do it, they hold back their emotions and become ill. it’s very healthy to scream.

    so these could be screams in protest?
    yes. it’s a protest song.

    that fits nicely with the theme of the new reinstallation at moma: current events from the past 40 years, and how they’ve shaped artists’ works. what’s it like to see voice piece for soprano in this context?
    there are so many instructions in [my book] grapefruit and i didn’t remember this one very well. then, five or six years ago, i wanted to do a piece outdoors at a museum in europe. i was going through grapefruit, and i thought, voice piece for soprano will do. i sent it to them, and it seemed like it was a very successful event. so i started to think, this is a big one. it could be paired with my cut piece, [a piece first performed in 1964, in which audience members took turns using a pair of scissors to gradually cut off all of ono’s clothes] in terms of protest and rebelliousness. i thought, “wow, this is great!” but then i moved on to do other things. then, moma said they wanted to do this one, and i said, “oh, really?” because i always thought moma was very quiet.

    not anymore.
    i feel very guilty about that, in a way. but i’m not the one who chose it. i just don’t want to give any trouble to anybody, comically. i suppose this is okay!

    well, then again, its effect isn’t really up to you, is it? it depends on the reaction of the audience. cut piece, which you just mentioned, is the same sort of situation. you’ve talked about how that piece has been very different depending on where you’ve performed it. i remember reading that the audience in japan was shy, whereas in london people became very avid and almost violent about cutting your clothes off. with voice piece for soprano at moma — as far as i can tell, new yorkers really like to scream.
    it might tone down a bit. initially people really want to scream but then they might start to want to make it into a more musical kind of expression. i don’t know which way it will go.

    it’s interesting that one of your pieces at moma involves screaming, and another is called whisper piece. how do you think they relate to each other?
    it’s very interesting because whisper piece might be a scream, and the scream piece might be a whisper. in the big picture, in the whole of the planet, a scream is definitely just a whisper. and the 16 written whispers in whisper piece could add up to a big scream, conceptually.

    you said before that screaming is healthy. i can’t help but think of arthur janov’s primal scream therapy, which you and john lennon became interested in in the 1970s.
    janov sent his book to us when we were living in england. john looked at it and said, “primal scream? that’s you!” we got so many books, but this one, because the title said “primal scream,” we thought there was a connection between my work and it, so john read it. if anything, primal therapy was influenced by me. i’m pretty humble about things. i don’t like to say, “they came after me!” but i also realize that by being so humble i’m doing a disfavor to women in society. so i do want to say what i did.

    but it’s also interesting that art sometimes influences the development of non-art things, like therapeutic techniques, or science.
    and it did. it’s very interesting, because i was always thinking about it that way. i thought, this artwork, if it’s a really good artwork, has to have everything in it to change the world. to change the world, you need both art and science. i think it’s a kind of a merging of art and science.

    where else in your work do you see that kind of relationship?
    well, like the wish piece. just to wish for something — and you don’t even have to write it down and put it on the tree or anything, but it’s stronger when you do that. then your wish and other people’s wishes merge in one tree — that, too, is very scientific, actually.

    really? in what sense?
    the vibration of wishing is going to be there. it’s no longer something that just came into your head and went away. you have stated it. and then you allow your statement to be on the tree — which is a kind of exposure — along with other wishes. and that becomes extremely strong. and then they are sent to the imagine peace tower in iceland [a memorial to john lennon inaugurated in 2007, where over 500,000 wishes from the wish trees have already been gathered].

    speaking of voices coming together, voice piece for soprano has been appropriated at least once. on the band sonic youth’s 1999 album syr4: goodbye to the 20th century, it’s performed by band leaders kim gordon and thurston moore's five year old daughter. what did you think of that?
    the way i see it, i made the initial movement, and then it went everywhere, and that’s very beautiful. i’m very happy that this creates some kind of movement.

    you performed the piece again yourself at the moma opening a few weeks ago. what was that like for you? was it just as cathartic as it was the first time you did it?
    definitely. i have a lot of emotion inside of me. when i saw the microphone, i just felt like doing it. i think that’s very true of me in general. when i hear music, my body starts to move, and i’m dancing. between a dance and a scream: well, that’s me.