THE THEATRICS OF PERFORMANCE ART: YOKO ONO’S CUT PIECE AT CARNEGIE HALL

In 1965, Yoko Ono, a Japanese performance artist, performed Cut Piece at Carnegie Hall in New York City. During the performance, Ono sat on stage and invited the audience to come up, cut off, and take a piece of her clothing. With the audience cutting a piece one by one, the behaviors from the previous participants impacted the later people's actions and the reflections from the auditorium. This study was undertaken in an effort to understand better Ono's artistic invention for Cut Piece: inspiring her audience to critically consider the outside world, including the interrelationships with other people and the existence of the established art institutions, with the support of the concert hall. By performing the piece at Carnegie Recital Hall instead of an art museum or art gallery, Ono promoted audience members to play two roles: observer and performer in her constructing artistic situation. According to the theatrical ideas of alienation and empathy, the two roles could guarantee the audience to both obtain critical thinking and emotional experience. Due to the revolution of Carnegie Hall from the private organization to non-profit one, Ono also waged an act of institutional critique, which criticized the functions and services of art institutions, especially the education for the public and the display of artworks. Therefore, through exploring new possibilities of a conventional musical hall, Ono specifically achieved her artistic and political goal of evoking audience members' critical rethink.