Instruction Pieces

The use of words as primary tool on Art practices, pushes the limits of more traditional creative orders and often involves the active engagement of viewers. This engagement, as a practice of art, is ephemeral, as every other life act. 
The huge difference :  "doing" and "done". 

Three art movements that aim to evoke fun, ephemeral, lack-of-worth ( monetary speaking ),and  "anti-art" discourses, and involved with the use of words, were Fluxus,Happenings and conceptual art .

For over fifty years , Yoko Ono has played a decisive role in these three art movements. 

Ono´s interdisciplinary approach to her artistic practice, which uses words as primary tool, has reached contemporary art, and consumed many of the definitions conceptual art assumed.Her famous and assertive approach to Art as words in included in her book Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono (Simon & Schuster 2000).

 When presented the book in New York (circa 1961) , it was called "concerts" . These concerts comprised three pieces: A Grapefruit in the World of Park, A Piece for Strawberries and Violins and AOS.In this later work, Ono wrapped two performers in gauze, back to back, and dangled an assortment of empty bottles and cans from their ankles and waists. Their instructions were to walk from one end of the stage to the other, without making any noise. This injunction against sound, coupled with the difficulty of one performer moving backwards while the other moved forward, and caused them to move extremely slowly, an effect which resembled a slow-motion film.

 Now the viewer / the reader / the "instructions follower", is the artist and the artistic element, the center piece.The result, an ephemeral event  that can be understood as art. / Eva Guerra Luján

My personal Selection
( based on the last Ono´s Exhibition in 2009 /
Arsenale Section 93 - Venece Art Biennale)

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Instruction Pieces (Yoko Ono )
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PAINTING TO ENLARGE AND SEE (1961)

Write five hundred telephone numbers on a canvas in a space as large as your palm. The numbers can be overlapped with one another. Also, the numbers can all be the same. Observe the drawing by enlarging it with a microscope. Also, you may take a picture of the drawing and enlarge it to the size you prefer.

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SNOW PIECE (1963)

Think that snow is falling. Think that snow is falling everywhere all the time. When you talk with a person, think that snow is falling between you and on the person. Stop conversing when you think the person is covered by snow.

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FLY PIECE (SUMMER 1963)

Fly.

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COUGH PIECE (WINTER 1961)

Keep coughing during a year

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BOX PIECE (SPRING 196Y)

Buy as many boxes.

Ask your wife to select one.

Dream Together.

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Note: You can print this page, cut each instruction

and give it to someone you´d like to watch performing this

for you.( That Piece could be called : Dictator Piece)

Instruction Pieces