Yoko Ono, You're on Notice

Someone give Kerry Brougher a raise. Over the weekend, the Hirshhorn curator set a new standard for patience as he endured humiliation beyond that which anyone should be asked to endure: He interviewed Yoko Ono. Before a live audience, even. Ono, well, she wasn't having it.

She had just finished a performance, sort of, at The Arc in Anacostia,* put on by Street Scenes DC. As a video from 2000 was projected on a screen behind her—a dance-y video featuring brightly colored blobs of color and bad, if typical, video installation music—Ono prowled the stage, occasionally shouting into her mic the way that a preacher might bark a hallelujah. A version of my favorite Ono piece, Play It by Trust, was assembled on the stage floor; she scattered the chess pieces with a kick. The video ended, the lights came on, the piece was done—so far, well, not so good, but we move on.

Except Yono didn't stop performing. The Q&A began with Brougher and Ono, seated together at a table. Perhaps Brougher expected the interview to go poorly. His first question to her was a real softball pitch—roughly, "Why do you work in so many media?". But before he'd phrased the question, she had crawled under the table and exited stage right. She came back with measuring tape and reported on the various ratios of Kerry Brougher ("His arm is longer than his head"). She banded his bicep with what appeared to be white tape and snubbed his questions, when he could get them off, with condescending quips. Once during his questions she laid down and intoned like a witch in a seizure—not, it seemed, to pantomime frustration with boring Brougher, but out of ADD compulsion. In an answer to one question, Yoko dragged Brougher under a black tarp, mumbling and moving about in a way to suggest that the two were, I don't know, snogging.

The tarp lay ready offstage at the ready, so maybe, I figured, the whole thing was a setup. If that's the case, what the hell was I watching? And if it wasn't—what the hell was I watching? She either set up Brougher as the fall guy, the straight suit to her mystic oracle, or it was a joke, and I missed the Mavs/Suns game for next to nothing. In the bright light of day it seems more likely a big laugh at my expense, but at the time I was so supremely embarrassed for Brougher, I could barely watch, and spent most of the Q&A spectacle trying to blind myself with the flashlight keychain I was handed before I entered.

Next came a more straightforward Q&A with the audience, during which I began to doubt whether other audience members were seeing the same thing I was. She was asked what artists and musicians inspire her ("Life" was her answer) and what she thought about the war ("Imagine peace" was basically her answer—really, she is that kind of ethereal alien). Ono revealed that the wishes tied to the wishing trees she's planting around the world will be collected and housed in an Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland. She didn't choose Iceland for its dense population of wish-fulfilling magical elves, or not solely for that reason. She chose Iceland because, as the northernmost nation on the planet, it's closest to the Universe. (What the hell, Ono?)

Finally, one woman asked whether it was possible for an audience to opt out of art—the kind of art that engages and requires an audience—by not participating. This pressing question had been growing in my own mind; had that woman followed up by asking whether we'd get out of there with any time left in the second half, I'd've had the kind of all-is-full-of-love communion that Ono was trying to foster. Distressingly, Ono's answer was "no". There was no exit. We were part of her art, like it or not. I took it as a bad sign for the Mavs.

What came afterward was unambiguously performance, and unambiguously awful. Assistants spread through the audience like tithe collectors, winding viewers' wrists together using thread from huge balls of yarn. (Concern for the game behind me, I feared I wouldn't escape before someone tried to shave my head.) That keychain? Harmless, alas—no sweet retinal release to be found there—but not merely a tchotchke. It was a magic wand, a wish-granting lamp. Totally useful.

Things began to take shape as the lights went out and another video came on: this one, Onochord, has an excellent title. Also, the disturbing feel of that 1984 Hillary Clinton clip. Ono led the crowd in a chant for peace ("War is over if you want it/ War is over now"), as a giant onscreen Ono flashed sequenced light messages at the audience. Decoded: "I Love You"—or "You Obey Ono"? The standing ovation, not to mention my permanently dilated eyes, revealed the discomfiting truth.**

When the lights came up, Ono wished everyone a beautiful life. Then: parting gifts! To participants she handed out shards of a person-tall vase destroyed during the war, promising that in a decade we'd all meet up and reassemble it. Hooray! Fuck.

I took the opportunity to sneak out before I could be fitted for white sneakers and betrothed to the rest of the crowd. Ian observed, as we decompressed on the Metro ride home, that he'd experienced similar cognitive dissonance after seeing Carolee Schneeman deliver a lecture at a museum. (That was not billed as a performance, at least. But man, people sure do complain about that Schneeman appearance.) Maybe the problem is with Fluxus; it's definitely not the case that all performance art is so self indulgent. I suspect, frankly, that Ono is just lazy. Her best ideas behind her, and those never being nearly so compelling as her celebrity, she's settled into her role as global swami. (There are worse ways to retire, but few so grating.)

Democratizing art—this is an OK goal. But trees, magic, wishes, feelings, everything is music, love is all you need, sha la la la la—God, how that stuff makes me cranky. Uncharitable though it may be to fisk an aging sprite, it devalues the currency to say that every instance of creativity, or gentleness, or happy furry puppy story time, is art. Or if it is, that it's worthwhile.

Final score? Phoenix 126, Dallas 104. Yoko Ono 1, Kerry Brougher 0. Me? I have a new keychain, and some literature I'd like to share with you. . . .

* I missed the beginning of the performance, owing to confusion about which way one exits the Southern Avenue Metro station. I'm lost without a grid, often even when I'm on the grid. There was too much cloud cover to tell which way was north, and I can't read maps. One couple made the same mistake I did, but when we turned around after realizing we were getting nowhere, they gave up and got back on the Metro. (Oh, happy couple!) So, if Ono planted a tree in Anacostia, I didn't hear it.

** Should you find yourself or a loved one indoctrinated by art, a circuit-breaking combo of ice-cold Budweiser, fridge-cold pizza, and stone-cold Blade III is encouraged to reset the brain, as Ian and I can attest.