Yoko Ono: Cut Piece. Performt von Peaches

In the organizer's words:

As part of the solo exhibition YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, Berlin-based musician and artist Peaches will perform Yoko Ono's groundbreaking work Cut Piece in the atrium of the Gropius Bau. First performed in Kyoto in 1964, Cut Piece is one of Ono's earliest and most important performance works.

At the first performance of Cut Piece, Yoko Ono sat alone on the stage of the Yamaichi Concert Hall with a pair of scissors in front of her. She invited the audience to join her on stage one by one and cut out pieces of her clothing, which the participants were allowed to keep. Ono herself remained almost motionless. By exploring the objectification of female bodies and dissolving the boundaries between passivity and activity, artist and audience, Cut Piece became one of the central works of feminist art and the Fluxus art movement.

Yoko Ono herself performed Cut Piece several times, and many other performers followed. Peaches, for example, performed the work at the Meltdown Festival in 2013 at Ono's personal invitation. Ono later said that Cut Piece would probably "never be performed with such eloquence again".

Yoko Ono is an artist, musician and activist. She was born in Tokyo in 1933 and grew up in Japan, occasionally also in San Francisco and New York. As early as 1960, Ono was a formative figure in the New York artist and composer scene. In the following decade, she continued to develop her visionary work in the fields of art, performance, music and film, creating iconic works such as Cut Piece and her book Grapefruit (both 1964).

As an iconic feminist musician, producer, director and performance artist, Peaches has spent more than two decades breaking down boundaries and changing pop culture for good. In her work, which spans music, art, film, theater, television and books, she has challenged social norms and patriarchal power structures and advocated for LGBTQIA+ rights and self-determination in matters of gender and sexual identity.

Note on content: The performance may contain nudity.

The performance takes place on the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin.