downtown music / yoko

i was tempted at last to read something about the New York No Wave movement (taken there by turns from reading something about the history of punk movement (term first used in Britain for music, but existing approximately as a loose cultural direction in America too at the time (see Ramones), although a bit differently, i think)

and discovered that Yoko Ono was a prominent figure in New York's cultural scene years before she met Lennon - i mean i am ashamed to confess that i kind of always dismissed her, because of Lennon, and such simplistic remarks as that she had a hand in dissolving the Beatles - and then there was this "walking on thin ice", which was a delightful song, and she is the woman John Lennon dedicated his "Woman" song to (i guess). but that's all i would know about her

No Wave article on wikipedia had a link to "downtown music" as a genre, or loose movement/style, closely related to experimental and noise music, encompassing also videoart concepts etc.

The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono—one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon—opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street to be used as a noise music performance space for a series curated by La Monte Young and Richard Maxfield.

here's a piece by Nam June Paik, a Korean considered the first video artist, based around (and featuring) Ruyichi Sakamoto's piece of music (i guess)



and here's Yoko Ono's performance act known as "Cut Piece", which is described in Wikipedia's article on Yoko like this:

Ono was an explorer of conceptual art and performance art. An example of her performance art is "Cut Piece" (this instance of performance art is also known as a "happening"), first performed in 1964 at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. Cut Piece had one destructive verb as its instruction: "Cut." Ono executed the performance in Tokyo by walking on stage and casually kneeling on the floor in a draped garment. Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting until she was naked. Cut Piece was one of Ono’s many opportunities to outwardly communicate her internal suffering through her art. Ono had originally been exposed to Jean-Paul Sartre's theories of existentialism in college, and in order to appease her own human suffering, Ono enlisted her viewers to complete her works of art in order to complete her identity as well. Besides a commentary on identity, Cut Piece was a commentary on the need for social unity and love. It was also a piece that touched on issues of gender and sexism as well as the greater, universal affliction of human suffering and loneliness.

i mean if you think about it, it is really strong, as a concept...