Wow. Just saw the confirmation that Yoko Ono is planning to come to Leipzig to open her forthcoming exhibition which will feature 60 of her works. That alone made me so excited, I love the quiet and humble unfinished poetry she employs. Her works give the viewer a lot of space for own thoughts and these individual thoughts are an integral part of the only supposedly unfinished artwork.
I remember when at school my class drove to Hamburg and visited the art museum. I guess I was about 15 or 16 at the time and despite the fact I had no own record or cassette player I was very deep into discovering all kinds of music, and mainly The Beatles. I spent hours at the local libraries listening to LPs and cassettes.
During that visit to the museum in Hamburg I was mesmerised by the fact they were also playing records, among those Yoko Ono's album "Fly". That whole album was so very different to anything else I had heard before, strange but exciting. And then ... she even put in a recording of her toilet flushing! It's called "Toilet Piece". Wow, she dared to record
that and even put it on record! I listened intensely, interesting, it sounded different from the ones I knew. More delicate. This was one of the first times I encountered the magic of field recordings, especially recordings of every-day sounds. Today I value them even more. We do not notice, but our sonic surroundings are changing slowly but constantly. Take toilets, the old ones do sound quite different to the modern automated self cleaning ones. Even when you change yours from high flushing to low flushing, it does sound different, as do different shapes etc.
I do hope I will get to see her in person again. She is getting old (85) and frail, but has not lost her wit and urge to create. There is another album forthcoming and the just released Imagine Ultimate that she curated and produced is one of the very best and lovingly done Super Deluxe Editions I have ever seen for a more than competitive low price.
The last time I saw her is more than 20 years ago in London. I was highly impressed by Sean who was on guitar and really touched me with his playing and how very well it complimented his mother's voice. I still like him a lot, very talented and full of energy.
So ... Dec 1 2018. Let's hope I'll get in.
https://mdbk.de/en/exhibitions/yoko-ono/
And the album Fly closes with "Telephone Piece", a ringing phone wich is picked up and then she says "This is Yoko". I read that she initially changed the sound of the phone country specific for the UK, US and Japan. Because ... they were different.
https://open.spotify.com/album/42oXWuPLLxMBZrK1HEzxUH?si=5C0oMEu-QM6k4lHmcsTRAg
