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Yoko Ono - Part 1
326 Plays8 months ago
Enjoy this episode about Music for the Mind, a Yoko Ono retrospective exhibition curated by Juliet Bingham and Patrizia Dander, on show at Tate Modern until September 1rst 2024. It was organized by Tate Modern and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/yoko-ono
Instagram: @yokoono
Born in 1933, Yoko Ono lived between three continents, and explored experimental art and music all throughout her life. This exhibition presents us with a lot of her work from the 1950s to today and is extremely collaborative and free. At the ripe age of 91 Yoko Ono is still a creative force that remained, for a great part, uncelebrated. Infamous, even. We hope to deconstruct these biased views and to unfold a rich and bold energy, fully dedicated to art.
How did we navigate such a space? How did we connect to the work? What parts of her life touched us the most?
Tune in and find out!
Music: Sarturn.
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Transcript
Yoko Ono's Exhibition at Tate Modern
00:00:19
Speaker
This episode is the first of two dedicated to Yoko Ono's exhibition Music of the Mind at Tate Modern. By the way, this exhibition is organized by Tate Modern in London in collaboration with Kunstsamlung Nordheim-Wesfallen in Düsseldorf.
Yoko Ono's Influence on Conceptualism
00:00:37
Speaker
So, we decided to extend our usual time allocated to exhibitions, which is one episode, because Yoko Ono is one of the most overlooked and yet pivotal artists of the second half of the 20th century. Personally, I find that she helps us understand conceptualism, a type of art we sort of lost contact with, and remain oblivious to in many ways, because she's not enamoured with it.
Yoko Ono's Early Life and Struggles
00:01:04
Speaker
She uses it for connectivity and togetherness,
00:01:07
Speaker
She understands its time-based nature, or rather she helped create it, because she wanted so to be a concert pianist or a composer, but ultimately she became Yoko Ono, one of the first women to navigate male spaces in contemporary art and music. She is a woman of firsts, and the first thing she was confronted with was constantly being an outsider,
00:01:33
Speaker
Her family was Catholic, but incredibly interested in classical Japanese art, while also dedicating a lot of time to jazz, her father, and painting. Her mother and her aunt Anna Bubnova, and her sister Vivara Bubnova, who introduced constructivism in Japan. They came straight from Russia. She was the first woman to enroll in a philosophy course in Japan, and she was the first person to publish a book of instruction art, Grapefruit,
00:02:03
Speaker
in 1964.
Pioneering Instruction Art
00:02:05
Speaker
This was before Solowith would produce his first wall drawing at Paula Cooper Gallery in 1968 and thus embark on an instruction-based form of drawing in relation with architecture. My point here is that it doesn't really matter who did what first, but it is important not to obliterate the role female but also queer, native or non-binary artists played. For instance,
00:02:29
Speaker
Personally, I knew of Grapefruit much later, then I knew of Lawrence Vinner, Joseph Cassout, and Solowit's writing about conceptual art. I was astounded by the poetic quality and impossibility as some of the instructions, and had to revise my idea of instruction art, when in fact her instructions were connected with the notion of musical schools and poetry. It also allowed me to understand one of the statements by Solowit, saying that, quote,
00:02:58
Speaker
Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach. Rational judgments repeat rational judgments. Irrational judgments lead to new experience. So these were the three first sentences of his Sentences of Conceptual Art published in 1969.
00:03:24
Speaker
King Lear says it, nothing comes from nothing, and art feeds off of other art in a complex way that is irreducible to the sterile notion of influence. We create together, and we create in our time, and we also resonate with other former times, and perhaps even with the future.
Challenges as a Japanese Woman in Avant-Garde
00:03:44
Speaker
So in this episode, we start by chatting about Yoko Ono's persona, what is said about her and the difficulties she faced as a Japanese woman in the state of the Pearl Harbor, but also as a US-based avant-garde artist going back in the 60s to an experimental and high-achieving Japanese art scene.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yoko Ono's two first introduction pieces are mentioned and it is exciting to see how music driven they were while simultaneously creating a sort of happening or performance right at the beginning of the 1950s. We stopped more or less in 1962 so much is left to say about Yoko Ono's career as an artist and the exhibition itself in our second episode.
00:04:30
Speaker
So, let's not waste any more time. Without further ado, let's dig in. Enjoy!
00:05:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome again to our humble podcast about artists seen through their exhibitions. With me, Joanna Pierre Nevis and my lovely co-host. We are devoted to this format of the exhibition because it allows for an experience you literally cannot have anywhere else. It can be uncomfortable, emotional,
00:05:29
Speaker
rigorous, chaotic, powerful, and I think the exhibition we are about to explore is a very good example of it, but it will always be challenging, you know, good challenging. That's why we have to talk about these exhibitions. For you, our listener, to go on a journey with us,
00:05:49
Speaker
where we will not shy away from questions, both very dumb and hopefully a bit deep as well, comments and anecdotes. And I am said lovely co-host Emily Harding, thanks for that Joanna, an art lover and an exhibition goer.
00:06:04
Speaker
And it's true, exhibitions are that once in a lifetime kind of moment, and they're different every time you go, even if you're going to the same one. So it's a really great way to experience art and have a great chat about it. But first, what was your week in culture like, Joanna?
00:06:23
Speaker
Well, as you know, my week was culture. So this was my big week of the year where we opened and closed the Drawing Now Art Fair week. So I
Joanna and Drawing Now Art Fair
00:06:36
Speaker
am the Artistic Director of Drawing Now Art Fair.
00:06:39
Speaker
And so we had lots of artists, galleries, talks, two exhibitions, and it was absolutely delightful. The week has been about drawing, which was absolutely fantastic. We had the exhibition of Susan Uski.
00:06:54
Speaker
So Suzanne won the prize, the Drawing Now Out Fair prize last year. So one of the great advantages of that prize is that you get an exhibition at the Drawing Lab the year after during the fair. So I visited her exhibition and it was absolutely lovely. It was a sort of scientific
00:07:14
Speaker
style drawing, an exploration or a comment on the scientific drawing. And she dedicated the exhibition to beavers and their impact on the ecosystem, but also the impacts of agriculture on their ecosystem. So that was incredibly
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, very interesting. I learned a lot. So from the 12th century onward, we basically destroyed the ecosystem that the beavers were building because they wild. They create forests around them and they also have an impact on the water. And so they kind of create these very damp, moist ecosystems and then everything grows around them.
00:07:54
Speaker
And from the 12th century onward, we completely destroyed that. I mean, in the UK, they're starting to reintroduce them, actually, into the wild. Ealing, here, where I live. Yeah, they just reintroduced beavers. I love beavers. I was so excited. But everyone sent me the post on Instagram because it's just, thank you, Suzanne Uski was incredible. Suzanne Husky, without the accent.
00:08:20
Speaker
was incredible to, she's a French artist, to see that exhibition was really lovely. And then I'm also excited to say that we unveiled the winner of the prize this year. And it's the Polish artist Tatiana Volska.
00:08:35
Speaker
I'm very happy about that. But I have to say that this year we had a great lineup of only women, so five women, including a cartoonist, Catherine Maurice, who is the only survivor of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. I don't know if you remember that. She was late.
00:08:53
Speaker
Oh my god. And she, when she arrived there, you know, everything was called and often, you know, they were there and yeah, it was quite, quite a big thing for her. But she is an incredible artist in her own terms. There was also a great friend who's a terrific artist, Marine Pagès. I mean,
00:09:10
Speaker
Anyone could have won the prize, to be very honest. Prizes are strange. And I also finally was so, so, so delighted to work with Inji Evina, who's this great Turkish artist. I had a solo show at the Maison le Culture d'Amiens through our partnership with
00:09:29
Speaker
the Frac Picardie, which is the only collection in the Frac, which are regional art funds in every region of France that is dedicated to contemporary drawing. And through this partnership, we did an exhibition there. And Inji is an incredible artist. She's in her sixties and she has an amazing journey into art and she represented Turkey.
00:09:52
Speaker
at the 2019 Venice Biennial. It was an honor to work with her. It was so impactful. It was really, really fantastic. So yeah, my week was culture. It was very, very tiring. By the way, I have to say, for our listeners' sake, because they're probably thinking, something changed about their voices. If we are ill, you and I, we're very sick. After drawing now, I always get sick. But this time, it was
00:10:20
Speaker
It's been quite a week. And for you too, Emily. Oh my gosh, yeah, totally. Which is why my week in culture has been television. But before we do that, I mean, so if people are interested in drawing now, how do they find out more about drawing now?
00:10:41
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's a very good question. So we have a website. So bear in mind, it is an art fair. So it is like any other art fair like Fries, but it is specifically about drawing in an expanded sense. You can find ceramics, you can find videos, animations, also drawings on paper. So we are an event, a yearly event, always the last week of March every year in Paris at the Carrot du Tonq.
00:11:11
Speaker
And we also do roundtables, we always curate one exhibition at least, at least one in the space of the Carrot du Temple. And it's an opportunity to travel worldwide while being in a very small space with 73 galleries from all over the world.
00:11:31
Speaker
who are presenting what their artists do best and like cutting-edge contemporary drawing. So that's where you can find us at the Quixote du Temple or explore
Significance of Drawing Now Art Fair
00:11:42
Speaker
our website. We have a YouTube channel as well, Drawing Now Art Fair, where you have all the talks we've done since the beginning, artist interviews. It's really, really interesting. Yeah, it is really cool. And I mean, are there that many forums that focus on drawing?
00:11:59
Speaker
Well, not really. To be very fair, the first ever drawing art fair was the Salon du Desan, which happens at the same time as us. And they've existed for 50 years, I think, so a long, long time. But they focus on old masters and until modernism.
00:12:22
Speaker
So we are the only art fair that really is dedicated to contemporary drawing. And then after us, so we've we've existed for 17 years. I've been working as an artistic director there since 2018. And now there are other art fairs dedicated to drawing like art on paper in Brussels, paper positions in Germany and Switzerland. There are other art fairs. We are the bigger. Sorry, this is really
00:12:55
Speaker
I am going to put it out there. We are the biggest. We are a human-sized art fair because we only have about 73 galleries. Art Brussels, which is in a few weeks.
00:13:07
Speaker
has 175 galleries, so we're quite small. But big enough for people to spend three days with us. I think we're one of the only art fairs where people come and go, and they come on the first day, they come on the second day, then they come during the weekend with some friends. It really is a meeting point because it is dedicated to a medium. Yeah, amazing.
00:13:32
Speaker
Brilliant. Wow. I feel like I'm being I was interviewed quite a lot last week and the weeks before I feel like I'm doing the final interview. But thank you, Emily, for letting me plug my my outfit. Yeah, totally. No, it's so impressive. And yeah, I mean, I haven't been. But one day, Joanna, one day I shall make it. Emily, in 2025, we'll we'll we'll hook you up.
00:13:59
Speaker
Amazing. So yeah, so my week in culture. What did you do?
00:14:06
Speaker
Laid on the sofa. What did you do? And did a whole lot of nothing. I coughed. I sneezed. I blew my nose a lot. You blew your nose? Yeah, and then had to put like chapstick on my nose because it was so worn down from all of it. Poor thing. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. I'll get that. So the Kleenex with the aloe, that's the way to go.
00:14:31
Speaker
Oh, sponsor us, please. Yeah, exactly. Kleenex with balsam. They're just tender on the nose and just exactly what you need when you have a cold. Yeah, and you won't need chapstick after a while. I mean, I still did, I gotta say. I still did have to put a little dab on there, but... Now, now, now. There goes the sponsoring. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:58
Speaker
So yeah, so I laid around on the sofa and watched a lot of television. Atlanta, have you seen Atlanta?
00:15:05
Speaker
I have not, and I love Donald Glover, so I need to get on it. How can you not get on it? How would you not love Donald Glover? So yeah, Atlanta is the one that he did before that. I don't know, there's four seasons of it, and I don't know if they're making anymore. It might be done. What's it about? It's unlike, that's the thing, Joanna. It's tough to say what it's about, so it's not plot driven. Okay, no, I'm curious. In the first episode, it's about a rapper and- Ooh, that's a me then.
00:15:33
Speaker
atlanta it's about a rapper in atlanta broadly and his crew is you know kind of his family and friends and i mean that's the very broad context for it in the first episode there's a shooting and you think oh wow it's gonna like the shooting is never talked about again
00:15:53
Speaker
like it is not about that you know it's like right in the first episode it's like we're gonna do this and you're gonna think it's gonna like the consequences of this big event that happens in the first season is gonna be what this is about guess what it's not you know so it's not plot driven there aren't like huge character arcs
00:16:12
Speaker
There's some people progress and things happen and choices are made, but it's not about that. Even the main cast doesn't appear in every episode. There are episodes that have nothing to do with the main characters, but it still works. So it's about a lot of things, but race is a central feature. It's a show that for me, I just didn't feel like it was trying to convince me of anything.
00:16:38
Speaker
about race. It wasn't trying to moralize about race, although it certainly, you know, would have license to for sure. But it's just like presenting realities and ideas that welcomes a viewer in to be like, huh,
00:16:55
Speaker
Right. It's unapologetically what it is, is almost makes it feel like it is something that's trying to do something to you, but it does it in such a light way. Like it's holding it all so lightly. And if you haven't seen Community,
00:17:13
Speaker
Community, he was an actor on that show. He wasn't a creator and producer on that show. But that show has a lot of magical realism in there and just absurd tangents of, and Atlanta has that too. I mean, parts of it are very real, you know, and kind of in this, these people's lives, but a lot of it is sort of reality adjacent.
00:17:38
Speaker
and kind of slips things in that way in a very very clever and imaginative way but yeah it's so good it's so I mean you must must check it I'm going to put this on the must list it's making me think of beef I loved beef oh
00:17:55
Speaker
on Netflix. And the tension, the kind of eroticism of really hating someone is so well explored because they really hate each other. Because at a certain point I thought this was going to go in the direction of them
00:18:10
Speaker
finally loving each other. But no, no, they hate each other from beginning to end because they're from opposing social drives and economic drives. And conflict is such a timely thing to be talking about. Cool. So in the vein of conflict, we could just give Pace a chance.
00:18:34
Speaker
Oh, well done. Good luck. Was that a segue or was that a segue? That was a segue of segues. Yeah, so yeah, we could imagine peace and yeah, talk about the exhibition for our listeners.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yes, we haven't unveiled the name of the artist yet, although it is the name of the episode.
Controversial Image of Yoko Ono
00:18:54
Speaker
So it will come as no surprise that we will be talking about the Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono. She's a person of contrast. She is very self-possessed. I mean, one of the most self-possessed women of the 50s and 60s.
00:19:09
Speaker
It brings kind of Hillary Clinton to mind. It's like, you know, someone who is, you know, has that self-possession and is hated for it. You know, I mean... And is hated, absolutely hated for it. She had that times 10 plus she was Japanese on top of it, you know, so yeah, she's incredible. Yeah, totally self-possessed. Yeah, very self-possessed, but also self-effacing.
00:19:34
Speaker
and not in a submissive way. So the fact that she's self-effacing is because for her there's nothing more important than art.
00:19:43
Speaker
And that's it. It's not the authorship. It's not the artists who are behind the art. Art is the most important thing for her. And what's really striking is that in the catalog, in the catalog of the exhibition, which is called Music of the Mind, by the way, is really well done. The catalog's really good. And you can see lots of photographs of her in the exhibition, in the catalog, and she's always opaque.
00:20:12
Speaker
that she has this aura of unpernetriability. You cannot know. She's just standing there for the sake of the art. So it's really tricky to do some research about her and not engage with the personas that were created for her. Because for lots of people, she's the person who broke up the Beatles, which is absolutely not true. It is totally not true. Yeah. It's so interesting because that is the overall, you know,
00:20:42
Speaker
from an American perspective, I don't know, maybe others as well. It's like, that is the overriding narrative about her. And, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine who grew up in the States from when he was 11, but is not from there. And he was like, yeah, when I was a kid, you know, love the Beatles. And that was
00:21:00
Speaker
you know, that was what I thought of her, like Boo Yoko Ono, because she broke up the Beatles. And, you know, he's not white. And he's like, and now looking at it and it's like, that was so racist, you know, it's like, but I totally didn't see it at the time because I was just, you know, absolutely blinded by the pervasiveness of this theory. And it's just... And the misogyny. Yeah, totally. Racism, misogyny.
00:21:29
Speaker
She got the whole cocktail. Yeah. And now he's like, I just can't even believe I signed up to that. You fell for that. So many people did. But that was the culture because alongside that, she's also the most notorious Japanese female celebrity of the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s. So she was known for being an eccentric,
00:21:54
Speaker
in the best case scenario. Honestly, like this was the best thing you could say about her or a vicious hag or a witch. She was called the witch in the press. She's this is not things that people would shout at her because they would shout chink. Like that's the thing she got in the UK and in America. So not even kind of realizing where exactly she came from.
00:22:15
Speaker
But she was in the press. She was called the witch. You can go back. I watched this Joan Rivers episode where she interviewed people who worked with her as assistants, including Amy Peng, who just released a documentary about her week with John Lennon, which was not a week weekend, which is not a week and what's much more than that.
00:22:39
Speaker
And the way they talk about her, they even talk about the fact that she wanted to eat her own placenta when she had her child, which is something that everybody does now. You freeze your placenta, you turn it into pills, and it's apparently really good for your health. But that was the witchy thing. She was a witch. She wanted to eat her placenta, which is something that now everyone is talking about. And there's a very big,
00:23:09
Speaker
phenomenon of women and even doctors suggesting to just keep the placenta and turn it into pills or you know whatever put it in food. I haven't done that to be honest with you but it is a thing and it's taken seriously now for many people but of course she was a witch because she wanted to and they were releasing
00:23:31
Speaker
like really private things about her life as if it was a given because she was not a person. She was a witch, a foreigner, and an older woman, so a witch. Up for grabs. In the exhibition they have listening booths where you can hear some of her recordings and music and there was a piece of music that it was a live show and she was talking before the song began and she
00:23:59
Speaker
said something to the effect of, you know, when I first got here, I was a bitch. And that's who I was. I was this bitch who broke up the Beatles. And now I've graduated to a witch. And she's like, so now I have way more power. You know, and she was just having. She said that I didn't get that about. Yeah, I mean, but I mean, there were so many recordings, right? It's like that just happened to be one that the exhibition was full of stuff.
00:24:29
Speaker
I'm going to go back anyway, but it's funny because the other day, so my son, my queer son uses the word bitch a lot, which is obviously something that, you know, gay men or bisexual men do. And I keep telling him, you know, that doesn't sit well with me that much. I don't claim, I don't reclaim that word. I was looking at him. I was like, anyway, we need, we need witches, not bitches. And then my daughter was there and she was like, oh,
00:24:57
Speaker
I'm going to get that, but actually Yoko Ono did it first, which I think is something we're going to say a lot in this episode. Yoko Ono did it first. And you know, I'm not very tempted by these firstisms of art history, but I think with Yoko Ono, it's so blatant.
00:25:14
Speaker
that she was so, she was the avant-garde of the avant-garde, but not only her, also Japan. Japanese avant-garde was way more interesting than the American avant-garde in the 60s, in the beginning of the 60s. It was more at the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s that things really developed in America. And in Japan, my gosh, so many things were happening.
00:25:41
Speaker
Anyway, I just want to address also this thing, this documentary of Amy Peng. So it's out there. And it's about an affair that John Lennon had with his assistant at the request of Yoko Ono herself. So it starts like that. So Yoko Ono asks Amy to have an affair with John Lennon because he was straying, he was not
00:26:06
Speaker
He was unbalanced again. And so it starts and the documentary is about their side of the story while exposing kind of going back in time and reframing Yoko Ono again as a sort of a witchy creature while John Lennon was finally free and finally having fun.
00:26:27
Speaker
And I against this documentary, not against, but in confrontation with this or in compliment to this documentary, I would suggest listening to an episode of the great, great podcast by Sarah Marshall, You're Wrong About, that really focuses on this idea that Yoko Ono broke the Beatles, but also focuses on John Lennon himself,
00:26:52
Speaker
because we are very guilty of treating John Lennon as a sort of a baby who was constantly manipulated by Yoko Ono, but also perhaps Amy Pank, who knows? And he was a man with agency. He had a very difficult childhood. Isn't it funny? It's like the powerful white man is suddenly given no agency and is suddenly subject to the whims and influence of a couple of women. So that's turning it down its head.
00:27:22
Speaker
Interesting, right? So that episode is really interesting. I think Amy Peng's documentary is very interesting as well. And there's another documentary, which is, I think it got the prize here at home as the most boring documentary ever made about the most exciting, interesting, compelling event of the 80s, which is the Apple TV documentary about John Lennon's assassination.
00:27:49
Speaker
I watched the most boring 10 minutes of that I watched. And yeah, I did more and you did good. No, it's snooze fest. It's just how can you turn something so, you know, crucially important has such an important phenomenon into something so boring.
00:28:11
Speaker
And also it's something that so many people really care about. There's people who still go to the Dakota and go to the Imagine Memorial in Central Park and all of it. But since we're talking about John Lennon, one of the things I think that I wanted to highlight is that Yoko Aouno was a full-blown artist with quite a following.
Yoko Ono's Career Before John Lennon
00:28:39
Speaker
when she met him. So she was an artist in her own right. She had a career, which is something that people forget a lot about her.
00:28:48
Speaker
She was invited to do a show in a very important gallery in London and that's how she met him. A solo show, by the way, which for a Japanese-American artist was quite the achievement. And also another thing is that when she met John Lennon, I think the question to ask
00:29:10
Speaker
to her as an artist by that point or from that point onward is also, I mean, the relationship she had with celebrity as a visual artist. And I feel that she really believed that she could use celebrity
00:29:27
Speaker
to propagate her message. And I think she was very naive in her relationship to celebrity. She seems to have been quite naive about it and fall into the caveats of such a relationship. She felt really ugly. She felt bad in the relationship. Everybody would tell her that she wasn't deserving of such a beautiful man, which in hindsight you kind of think, beautiful? Really?
00:29:57
Speaker
Gorgeous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, okay, maybe it's something of the time, you know. Gorgeous. And we don't want to call anyone ugly. He was also gorgeous, for sure. But I mean, honestly, she was such a powerful woman, charismatic woman. So I think there's also that aspect that I would love to, if we have time, sure we will, that I'd love to explore with you as well, you know. But anyway,
00:30:25
Speaker
Let's go back to the beginnings, you know, to Yoko Ono as a child. You know, she had a very peculiar upbringing. She was born into a family of wealth and privilege who lived in the rarefied atmosphere of not only money, but also intellectual endeavors. So
00:30:50
Speaker
Her father wanted to be a jazz musician. He was all about music and her mother was fascinated by her father because of that. Her great-grandfather at Sushi Sai Show
00:31:05
Speaker
was convinced that they had an ancestor which was a ninth century founder of a radical Buddhist sect that contributed to overthrow the old tradition of feudal military dictatorship or shoguns and restored the role of the emperor.
00:31:23
Speaker
And so this ancestor was quite engaged in politics, but also had a vision of how to be a Buddhist, how to connect faith to power, etc.
00:31:39
Speaker
She was growing up in the sort of kind of aspirational setting where it was all about being a virtuoso pianist. It was all about knowing poetry, knowing the classics. It was a family that was very oriented towards art.
00:32:01
Speaker
But they were also very demanding and not very caring as parents. So Yoko Ono, she made me think of Nina Simone, who wanted to be concert pianists and was always told that a Black woman could never achieve that role. And Yoko Ono wanted to be a concert pianist. So that's what she wanted to do. And her father regularly, as she was growing up, would check on her fingers.
00:32:30
Speaker
to see if she had the hands of a pianist and kept telling her, you're not going to make it. You don't have it. And went, thank you, Father and Father Dearest. And then when she moved on to think, OK, if I can't be a pianist, maybe I can be a composer, he told her women cannot be composers. Like, you can't do it.
00:32:55
Speaker
So on one side, she had a very interesting father who was really into music, was into culture, but at the same time, emotionally, he was completely disconnected from her and had no even the remotest idea of supporting her as an artist. And then her mum criticized her looks
00:33:18
Speaker
and told her repeatedly that she was very lucky to have such a beautiful moment. And would never touch her, like would not hug her, like the same Marina Abramovich scenario, where they were very, very distant. So she had quite a weird upbringing, but she also had a Russian aunt, I forget her name, Vervara something, who introduced constructivism in Japan.
00:33:46
Speaker
So, you know, she had an incredible family, to be very honest, which is also very...
00:33:53
Speaker
which is also a very ambivalent relationship to family, isn't it? Where you have a family who kind of feeds you culturally, but then emotionally is completely vacant. So that was her life. And her father was very turned toward the United States. So they went back and forth between the States and Japan. When the war broke with China in 37, they went back. They were in San Francisco. They went back to Tokyo. So they were kind of toing and froing between the United States and Japan.
00:34:23
Speaker
until finally the Second World War broke in Japan and they were there or they went back there. And they, even though they were wealthy people, they lived a horrible life. They had to flee Tokyo. They went into the countryside. And this is a crucial moment for the artist Yoko Ono because she remembers lying down in some shack looking at the sky
00:34:52
Speaker
and devising menus with her brother because they were so hungry. They had nothing to eat. They were so hungry that they would just dream of menus. And she says, that was my first art piece. That was the first time where I knew that through imagination.
00:35:11
Speaker
I could get somewhere. And she also realised that no matter what, the sky is always there for you and it's always producing images for you. Imagine. And it's always... Imagine sushi. Imagine. It's going to sink. Is all the people eating sushi?
00:35:34
Speaker
So I have a quote from her. I realized even then that just through imagining we can be happy. So we had our conceptual dinner and this is maybe my first piece of art. So I think this encapsulates
00:35:49
Speaker
her personality, it encapsulates who she is, which is art is everything. In this situation of hunger, and we've explored lots of artists who have gone through that, you know, including Gerhard Hichter our last episode,
00:36:07
Speaker
This attitude is a Yoko Ono. Art will save you. You can't eat, but if you imagine art, if you imagine a piece of sushi, you can be happy. Yeah. And what I like about that too is like, even though she was so, you know, had this emotional vacuum that she was growing up with in her parents, I guess not vacuum. I mean, there were a lot of emotions there, just not warm, caring ones.
00:36:34
Speaker
And what a loving thing to do for her little brother, you know, I mean, she's obviously trying to take him to a better place through a really difficult time. That's really, you know, such an act of love that she's doing for brother. And if that's where her
00:36:52
Speaker
her art came from, kind of what she's trying to do with other people and strangers and anyone who encounters her art is to carry them to a better place. And I think that's one of the things too that really defines her art is that optimism and that turning towards something better and more fruitful for everyone, not just oneself, which is, yeah.
00:37:21
Speaker
That's a really good point you're making actually, because she was with her brother, she was caring for someone else, so she was also taking her brother into that journey, and she was not alone when she was creating her first piece, which of course is something that she said afterwards, she realized afterwards.
00:37:41
Speaker
And it is true, and I think that's one of the things we'll be talking about, that she's one of the few artists who is not representing the world, who is not trying to create a relationship with the world as it is. She's trying to change the world through art. And she's very criticized for it. She's considered to be a bit Pollyanna-ish.
00:38:04
Speaker
And I think there's nothing wrong with that. And it's actually very much of the time conceptual art really wanted to put a dent into the real world. It was not about representing. It was about presenting possibilities and opening up horizons. And for sure, this episode really makes you think of that.
00:38:30
Speaker
And also of how independent she was. So she was very independent. She always had, even when she was still in Japan, she enrolled in a philosophy class course. And she had a number of love affairs, including I think with one or two professors. So she was always, and I think it's also typical of the time when you were a woman who was independent,
00:38:55
Speaker
He was trying to achieve something in a space where there was male oriented. Obviously one of the ways to connect to men was through love affairs and intimacy, which is absolutely understandable. She was a woman with desires and I love that about her. And she was always an apologetic about that. Totally. And not to like psychoanalyze, but it's like, if you don't have much intimacy growing up,
00:39:21
Speaker
I imagine that's a good way to get it, that can feel like a good way to get it. Yeah, it's a proactive way of getting what you need. And I think she's very good at that.
Education and Early Artwork
00:39:33
Speaker
So her family, after this really tough period in Japan, went back to New York, where she studied at Sarah Lawrence. So it's a private liberal arts college that was quite cutting edge, so super experimental.
00:39:49
Speaker
And it was girls only. So she studied English with Catherine Mansell, poetry with Alistair Reid, and she did painting, photography, cinema, performance art, video, and sometimes even mixing genres. And when you think about it, and when you think about art schools now,
00:40:07
Speaker
you kind of think, wow, there was something happening there. And so, bear in mind listeners, we're still in 1953, and she creates her first artwork, which is called Secret Peace.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so it says, decide on one note you want to play, so still very much connected with music. Play it with the following accompaniment, the woods from 5am to 9am in summer.
00:40:38
Speaker
So this was 1953. And what is really interesting, and as a curator, I'm always fascinated by where the visual arts, so where artists who produce visual artwork come from. They don't always go to fine art school.
00:40:55
Speaker
And Yoko Ono very much comes from the idea of scores and the idea of poetry and especially and overall music. That was her thing. And it's really interesting to see that she goes into instruction art through the idea of the school.
00:41:15
Speaker
So that was really fascinating. Another thing that I read was the way she was perceived going back to what I was saying regarding her opacity and the fact that she was not
00:41:30
Speaker
a collective person. She's full of contradictions because she's always concerned with humanity, but then she is a very solitary person and quite mysterious. Yeah, you can't imagine her sort of joining the sorority on campus. That would be the antithesis of her vibe. Yeah, she has that
00:41:53
Speaker
lonely or independent kind of vibe, doesn't she? And she's in a girl's school and she had been before involved in philosophy, so in the pretty much male-oriented world. So perhaps she wasn't, and also
00:42:11
Speaker
the education she had, she had such a privileged education, the experience of the war and the nuclear bomb when she was 12. I mean all of that will make for someone arriving in New York and having had 300 lives compared to all the people who were at school with her.
00:42:27
Speaker
So she was described, so Maya Kupfermann says she was particularly adept, the best in class. She is a high achiever. And he recalls evidence of a strong intensity. She was tightly put together and intent on doing well.
00:42:45
Speaker
The other students were more relaxed. She wasn't relaxed, ever. At the same time, she was a shadow figure on campus. When you focused on her, she was fine, but then she sort of disappeared like a phantom, which is...
00:43:02
Speaker
her. Like, what a good description. And you can see how, you know, not having ever met her, but like that feels exactly right. She was described as sweet, opaque, ghostly, ethereal and intelligent by her teachers. She did another work at the time. So this is in the big, it's in the fifties. Okay. So we're still in the fifties.
00:43:26
Speaker
which was called Lighting Piece, and it's the piece that starts the exhibition.
Performance Art: Lighting Piece
00:43:31
Speaker
I mean, there's something before, as you enter, like on the wall right as you enter, that you have to walk along on the left to go into the first room. But the first piece that we see as a video, in video form, is Lighting Piece, where she sat next to a piano and she would light matches and watch them burn.
00:43:54
Speaker
So that's one of the first pieces as well. And it's one that starts the exhibition as well. Yeah. And I mean, I was just going to say, and I mean, that piece in particular, it's, it's video, it's performance, but it's also instruction. It's kind of one of her first instruction pieces. Maybe, maybe I don't know if I have that totally right, if it's one of her first, but I mean, it's, um,
00:44:19
Speaker
one of her early instructions, at least, and the instruction was light a match and watch it till it goes out. So it's something that she performed and videoed, but then also wanted anybody who came along to perform on their own wherever. And then she performed at loads of times through her career, but it also included a concert of inaudible sounds and sounds that reached the sky
00:44:48
Speaker
and breaths so she imagined a score again kind of linking back to music going through all of this and so she noted in in this this lighting piece I wanted most things to be performed in the dark therefore asking the audience to stretch their imaginations so again putting it all back on
00:45:12
Speaker
Excuse me, you the attendee for participation. Thank you so much for talking about that because that's going to allow me to make a leap into 1962. So she eventually married Toshi Ichianagi, who's a famous composer, a Japanese composer.
00:45:35
Speaker
All the works that she's preparing at Sarah Lawrence, including the one you mentioned, which is made of inaudible sounds because they're either too high, too high pitched in some ways, or impossible to hear in terms of our morphology. And she performed in a very famous concert place that was supposed to be experimental already in 1962. So one of the things that I think is really important to say
00:46:04
Speaker
is how incredibly advanced Japan was in terms of experimental art in all areas, visual arts, cinema, music, ever poetry. I mean, the Gutai movement was being born at the time in another city in Japan. I mean, it was really, really intense. And therefore, this was received not as a sort of oddity, but the
00:46:29
Speaker
know people were waiting to see what she was going to do and she went so she was there after having been in New York with her husband performing that piece and she was with John Cage so she came to Japan also to accompany John Cage. They were quite close after having had a period in New York where she was she started to to know people in the art world including
00:46:53
Speaker
George Masunas, who was the person who developed the Fluxus movement. And so she went to Japan, she performed that. And in the press, it was written that her work was derivative. That concert you're talking about was derivative and was Cajun. And Toshi Ichanagi, who she was
00:47:15
Speaker
drifting away from, you know, they were drifting away romantically, but they were very much close in terms of artistic endeavors and artistic sensibility defended her. Basically what the journalist was saying is that she was copying John Cage, which is really incredible because John Cage had been learning about Buddhism with Professor Suzuki in America. So if anyone was derivative,
00:47:42
Speaker
who were actually learning about Buddhism and incorporating Buddhist premises in their work. But she actually was raised in that... Well, her family was Catholic. Again, her family was so odd, her family was Catholic, but she grew up in a Buddhist country, so obviously she knew much more about anything. And she did incorporate Buddhists
00:48:10
Speaker
thought into her work. And so Ichenagi defended her and said that this had nothing to do with 4.33, which was four minutes, 33 seconds in silence.
00:48:25
Speaker
thus validating all the other sounds that you can hear in the concert hall. So John Cage's piece. Whereas with her, it was all about the sounds that reached the sky and other sounds that could not reach your ears. So she was producing sound. She was not making you listen to the sound of the room at all. So they missed the point. And of course they had to accuse the only woman
00:48:51
Speaker
doing something in that concert hall, you know, one of the only women, as being derivative of a Western artist, no less. Yeah, exactly. And it's, I mean, you think of like how, what a big influence John Cage was, even on a lot of the artists we've talked about on this podcast, in terms of Philip Guston, I mean, even, even Dido Moriyama, I mean, but it's like, they're,
00:49:19
Speaker
I mean, none of them were like, oh, you're just ripping off some other guy, you know, even though they were kind of doing things in a different format. But yeah, I know this, I mean, of course, I mean, of course, she had to be accused. Yeah, it's like, even way before John Lennon, she was getting in the neck, you know, this, this woman for her all the time, she was going about it.
00:49:42
Speaker
And the fact that she is actually still going today is just a huge monument to her inner strength. I mean, so many people would have been like, you know what?
00:49:53
Speaker
I don't know, maybe it's just not worth it. Maybe I'll just have a quiet life, live it out here in the Dakota. I'm good, you know? I mean, but yeah, she's just continuing. And that's, yeah, that is really impressive. I mean, she started out her life unrecognized and uncelebrated by her parents, by her own family. And she went off just doing whatever she wanted to do. Because when she enrolled in philosophy class, she was very criticized when she wrote
00:50:21
Speaker
Non-fiction, they would tell her it was too narrative. When she wrote fiction, they would tell her it was too much out of the bounds of what fiction writing was supposed to be. I mean, she never really felt at home. And I think Sarah Lawrence was probably the only place where she could really develop her creativity.
00:50:41
Speaker
But it was the same thing when she was in New York, so before going to Japan. She started, I'm not sure I'm getting this one right, was it before or after? I think it was probably after this beginning of the 60s time period. So she went back to New York and she started
00:50:58
Speaker
welcoming people with her composer husband into her, into their loft. And they would do these performances. She would do her paintings, you know, her kind of like interactive or quirky instructional. Throw Jello at the wall. Throw Jello at the wall. And then start putting like Japanese characters and ink over it and then lighting it on fire and everybody was like, oh my God, I'm going to die.
00:51:25
Speaker
But this is, so the Chamber Street stuff, I think this is incredible. And I think, I think this just, again, goes to the heart of what she is. And when, when we came to the Chamber Street stuff in the exhibition, because I had no idea that she was just like throwing open the doors to these avant-garde artists in New York at that
Organizing Avant-Garde Gatherings
00:51:46
Speaker
time. And maybe this was pre-factory? Could this have been pre-factory?
00:51:51
Speaker
I mean, maybe the same time, yeah. But I mean, factory was 1963, right? So it was kind of developing at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. But even still, as you say, for a woman to kind of be at the forefront of doing that is incredible.
00:52:13
Speaker
This is where I started to think of her differently because to be honest, it's like her work has never, I've had a hard time relating to her work.
00:52:24
Speaker
But when, because very cerebral and what is it you want me to do? And this doesn't feel like you're trying that hard. What are you producing here, Yoko Ono? You're producing an instruction for me to do something. Is this art? You know, and I mean, I've had all of this kind of- What are you making? What are you making? Exactly. What are you doing? Are you performing? Perform for me. Come on.
00:52:47
Speaker
And I mean, you know, so it's like I went to this this exhibition in Minneapolis years and years ago and I remember there was a room and it had some kind of like tuning fork in it and it was like, you know, you just need to hit the tuning fork and I just remember being like,
00:53:10
Speaker
I gotta feel that, like what is this supposed to be? So anyway, so lots of cerebral kind of like overload, which I frankly get in a lot of
00:53:22
Speaker
exhibitions, especially with contemporary art. My brain goes into overdrive. It's like, what is this? I don't get it. The questions roll in and I just have to let that sort of intellectual vomit just pass. I just need to let it out.
00:53:42
Speaker
let it go and then I just need to and then I can kind of sit with whatever it is the artist wants me to sit with and then maybe I can feel something I would call I would call that an intellectual panic I think conceptual arts really sets up
00:54:01
Speaker
the audience to first of all be very, very discombobulated and then go into a slight panic of what the hell is this? What is this? What are you doing? Why do you want me to do something? What are you doing? What's so great about this? But when I read about the Chambers Street stuff,
00:54:28
Speaker
So Chamber Street, just to explain for our listeners, is the loft that she shared with her composer husband, and where she started welcoming lots of people from John Cage, Philip Glass, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, Terry Reiler, and very importantly, La Monte Young, because they became quite close afterwards.
00:54:55
Speaker
Yeah. And so loads of avant-garde artists at the time to this loft to just explore art and performances. To just explore art together. Can you imagine doing that nowadays? People will be like, what are we, what are you doing? Can we have a dinner? You know more than me. Are you doing the roasts? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know more than me. So this apparently doesn't happen anymore then. I mean, what's happened at art schools or something, right? I mean, I think that we've come to a place in the art world that is very conservative.
00:55:25
Speaker
Um, and it's getting harder and harder to, um, convey conceptual practices and to get together around arts. And that's how not to plug it, you know, I didn't create drawing now, it wasn't my invention. Just work for them. And I really love drawing now because of that, because you end up talking about drawing and you see very passionate people really wanting to talk about the art, what they've seen in the gallery booths.
00:55:55
Speaker
The talks we do, the roundtables, always end up with people meeting each other, going after for coffees to talk about what they're doing. And it's becoming more and more rare to have that kind of event. And shout out to a very good friend who I haven't seen in a long, long time called Pierre Le Guillaume. He's an amazing artist. And he did this thing called La Promesse de Les Crands.
00:56:18
Speaker
the promise of the screen and he would set up a screen. So there would be a screen where he would project, he would invite artists to propose videos. That's where Diogo did his first performance. So the screen for Diogo was the sheet of paper that he folded, turned into a cube and made his first cube performance, which you can see. And then, do check it out. Diogo Pimentão.
00:56:47
Speaker
plugging in my husband's work. We're a bit like Yoko Ono and John Lennon, basically. Totally. Totally. So you'd have the screening or the performance or whatever, and then the screen would lift up, and there was a bar behind it. And so people would drink, but because they had just experienced something together, it was one of the first arts
00:57:11
Speaker
experiences I had where people were really talking about the work. And that was such a big, I'm not a very big small talker. So for me was like one of the happiest places, you know, I experienced when I lived in Paris, this was around 2006, 2007. It was so, so pleasant, but it's very rare actually, because in the art world, everyone's anxious. They want to prove that they're doing something that they're, you know, that the
00:57:39
Speaker
they're progressing in the right direction or they want you to go and see their exhibition. So it's all about plugging stuff and not really talking about the art. And so in this time, I mean, of course, this was a phenomenon of the time as well. There was no social media, TV was crap.
00:57:59
Speaker
People would get together. People were out in the streets demonstrating. They were out in the streets fighting for civil rights. You know, it was a time where people really got together and collectivity was a thing where you were building a better future in some way. So, of course, like Marina Abramovich, she was of her time for sure.
00:58:20
Speaker
But she started really early on and she did start The Loft Culture, which became so much of a thing for people like Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, even The Factory. I mean, all of those, even the cliche that you now see in films of the 80s where
00:58:38
Speaker
You had an artist loft with neon sculptures all the time. That came from there. She was the first one to do that. Yeah. And that was quite impressive. Just to link back to a point I started to make about five minutes ago, I feel like. I am so sorry, Emily. No, no, no. We wandered together. That's what it's all about. We wandered together. Yes, we did. I'm just mentioning it because I actually remembered to link back to it.
00:59:06
Speaker
So bragging, basically. Wow, I'm impressed. Yeah, thank you. But it was through the chambers, through the loft stuff that made me see her as an event organizer. So it's like, in a way, you know, and it's like, so it's about welcoming people into a space.
00:59:28
Speaker
and just holding it really lightly just to see what happens to see what unfolds and I mean just to kind of you know give up give a framing but give up control you know and and and that's when I thought basically that's what I do in my job.
00:59:46
Speaker
I'm an event organizer. So basically, and I have a husband that plays guitar. Same, same. Same. Listen, it's us. We are reverberate. We are pursuing the tradition. Exactly. Our influence. Of the power couple. Yeah. Yoko Ono has influenced us beyond our even consciousness until just now, which is amazing.
01:00:11
Speaker
Until just now. But I have to say it's like so the exhibition just to jump to the exhibition for a second. I was gonna say isn't that what the exhibition is? Yeah. But make your point. So the exhibition as you mentioned before you actually get in there there's the wish trees which is something she's been doing for years and it's trees that are indoors and you can write a wish and hang it on the tree. Or outdoors, yeah.
01:00:38
Speaker
And it comes from a Buddhist tradition, guys. She really incorporates Buddhism into the work she did. And first hand, not through Professor Suzuki, who was teaching everyone back in the States, but through her own culture, sorry, and a friend.
01:00:59
Speaker
No, for sure, because that comes up again in cut piece, which we'll talk about later on. But what I liked about that was having your first experience of the exhibition be something so personal and collective, it taps into your higher mind. It's like, oh, what is my wish? What's my great wish?
01:01:27
Speaker
right now. And, you know, looking at the wishes, I mean, it was wonderful. I mean, they were just like written in all sorts of languages. And, you know, the ones that I could read in English, I mean, were high wishes, wishes for peace, wishes for freedom, wishes for dignity and, you know, freedom for Palestine and peace in Ukraine and all, you know, kind of they weren't like, I want to win the lottery, you know,
01:01:53
Speaker
I want a little car. You know, it wasn't, you know, wishes for trivial kind of earthly things. It really, you know, it helps people before they even go into the exhibition to be in a frame of mind that is much different than they would be if they just plunged into lighting piece initially. Like that is, it's like a filter. It's like she's sifting out
01:02:23
Speaker
your, you know, kind of, you know, normal, everyday thoughts, and she's putting everybody into a place. And I think about that, you know, I mean, on a much, much lower level, Joanna. I mean... Are we talking about Jack White again? No, no, we could... Yeah, no, but on a much lower level, it's like I've thought about that with events that I've put together. It's like,
01:02:50
Speaker
you know, posing on a lower level. But I mean, it's not an exhibition at the Tate, but but like, you know, opening with a question to get people into a frame of mind to prime the mind for the conversation that is to come so that they might be a little bit more open or might be a little bit more expansive than they would be if they hadn't had that initial question.
01:03:16
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I think so you think her work is about you think her work is about togetherness. Yeah, definitely. I mean, she, you know, she definitely has the collective and she definitely has, you know, her her her respect and belief in imagination.
01:03:36
Speaker
is profound and you get that the moment you know that's the first thing you get in the exhibition is what's your wish you know what like imagine you know and that yeah i mean and that's certainly something that flows through with uh with a lot of the pieces but it's
01:03:53
Speaker
I just think, you know, artist and art comes with a lot of baggage. And in my mind, there is that baggage. Like, what are you creating? What are you performing? Otherwise, you know. What's your skill? What's your skill? What's your skill? It's a lot about skill. And we interpret skill. I wrote a text a few years back about the idea of skill in drawing. And I shifted the attention from the skill of the line.
01:04:22
Speaker
to the skill of framing, whatever line you're doing, or someone else would be doing, like in solo it, for example, where people would make his drawings, not him. And the idea of skill here is very interesting, because the skill is not in a sort of a technical talent that you correlate with traditional technologies of art.
01:04:49
Speaker
It's somewhere else. And she really is, I agree with you. I mean, she says so herself. It's all about letting go. And she is bored with the art world. She's not interested in the art world. She is interested in giving the power for everyone to be an artist through the power of imagination. That's what she wants to do. She finds it extremely boring to deal with the egos of artists. And that's another
01:05:20
Speaker
Japanese thing that she's bringing in which is a very different idea of the ego and when you think about artists immediately the ego of authorship is there and she doesn't have that and to your point the lighting piece so the first one that really kind of I think
01:05:42
Speaker
in some ways after the wish tree and after the sentence that she wrote in the beginning. And when you get into the room and you see lighting piece, it suddenly becomes uber-conceptual. Suddenly you think, oh, what is this about?
01:05:58
Speaker
This is something else. It's not something I can participate in. So there's a lot of text and you read the text and you understand where she performed it first, when she thought of it, what this video is from, who made the video because it's all about togetherness for her, and also the repetition of certain gestures because the wish trees are very known. I've experienced them before. I'm sure you have as well.
01:06:23
Speaker
And so when you get there, I immediately thought of the scene, the very famous scene of Tarkovsky's film, Nostalgia, where a character has to cross a cold pool of water holding a candle.
01:06:45
Speaker
and not letting the flame go off, the flame of the candle. And so it's a very potent scene that is a lot about faith. And I don't relate to Tarkovsky very much because it's very faith driven and religion driven. And that scene has always annoyed me and yoga loves it. And I find it incredibly annoying. I find it excruciatingly. I don't want to say corny, it's such a terrible word, but I have a hard time with it.
01:07:15
Speaker
because it's all about you sweating, making an effort. It's so effort-driven. It's not about faith to me. It's about realizing where the draft is coming from, protecting the candle, holding your body in cold water. It's a very male-performative kind of thing. Whereas with her, what is so beautiful is she's just holding a match, watching it burn.
01:07:46
Speaker
It takes time. And that's the time you're going to take to see that energy, live its life, start really powerful, then gaining momentum and then slowly fading away and dying out. And that's it. And she's by a piano. So obviously the exhibition is called Music of the Mind. There's this idea of the score as well.
01:08:09
Speaker
music takes time, it takes place in time, it's an action and you feel an energy in it and that's something that is irreducible but also in some ways very personal but at the same time collective.
Conceptual Art and Imagination
01:08:23
Speaker
So she's saying a lot of things with that piece that I think probably was a bit discombobulating for those who arrived from
01:08:29
Speaker
the very immediate like, I'm going to make a wish and this is all about imagination. And suddenly she has quite a few conceptual pieces that are not so accessible like you were saying in the exhibition. We will continue in the next episode.
01:08:46
Speaker
to talk about Yoko Ono's incredible journey. We're still in the beginning of the 60s, so that's crazy. And we haven't even talked about the paintings yet. We're still in 1962, and that's why we decided to turn this into two-part episode for the first time, because we really thought that this was an artist who deserves attention and not to be defined by one of the husbands
01:09:14
Speaker
she had in her
Episode Wrap-Up
01:09:15
Speaker
life. So thank you so much for following on this exploration of the work of Yoko Ono, part one. We hope you enjoyed listening as we enjoyed recording this conversation. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at exhibitionistaspodcast.
01:09:31
Speaker
and leave us a review we'd love to hear from you follow the podcast it means a lot and it does make a huge difference as everyone knows tell your friends leave us comments and suggestions and don't forget we visit exhibitions so that you have to go out there give your local gallery a visit why not
01:09:51
Speaker
stroll on in. It's not as scary as you might think it is. I have found that to be true. So it's always worth it, even if you don't like it. Read a bit about the artist and let us know what you are seeing and hearing out there and what it's meaning to you. That would be fantastic. So until then,
01:10:12
Speaker
Take care. Take care. Thank you for doing this with us. See you, Emily. Always so nice to chat with you. Take care and get well soon. And you. Take care. Bye bye. Will do. Will do.
01:10:35
Speaker
Bye!
01:11:09
Speaker
you