Oh Yoko: Four by Yoko Ono

Nov. 2 + 4 - 7:30 pm

120 NE Russell

About This Screening

One of the most misunderstood and controversial artists working today, Yoko Ono is finally being recognized by the mainstream for her influential minimalist and conceptual body of multidisciplinary work. Already an established artist in the early 1960s gallery scene and the Fluxus movement, Ono turned her attention to film and made sixteen films between 1964 and 1972. These two nights focus on some of her early conceptual film work, including The Museum of Modern Art Show, in which a group of people (including Bob Dylan and Jack Nicholson) arrive at an imaginary Ono exhibition at MoMA only to find that they are the actual art piece as they are filmed by John Lennon. No. 4 (Bottoms) is a film of continuous close-up shots of 365 naked bottoms walking on a treadmill accompanied by a soundtrack of interviews with the bottoms' counterparts; Ono stated her aim was to encourage dialogues on peace. Erection is a time-lapsed series of stills documenting the construction of a hotel in London over eighteen months. Rape, a mini-feature collaboration with Lennon, provokes questions of privacy and voyeurism as a London film crew follows a woman against her wishes throughout the city and into her apartment.