Ein Performanceabend zu Yoko Ono mit Mira Mann und Jimmy Robert

In the organizer's words:

Yoko Ono's performances caused a sensation right from the start. Initially misunderstood and even ridiculed, they are now considered milestones in art history - above all Cut Piece (1964), for which Ono sat motionless on a stage and had the audience cut off her clothes. Based on simple instructions, her performances consistently test the boundaries between everyday life and art, between artist and audience. Düsseldorf-based artist Mira Mann (*1993 in Frankfurt am Main) and Paris-based Jimmy Robert (*1975 in Guadeloupe, France) draw on source material by Yoko Ono in their performances and present interpretations of her radical work.

Jimmy Robert is known for his engagement with the works of feminist performance artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Yoko Ono. He developed the performance Figure de Style (2008/2024 ) based on Ono's Cut Piece. While the audience removes pieces of white tape from his upper body, he reads from reviews of Ono's performance in London in 1966 . Figure de Style reflects the character and reception history of Yoko Ono's iconic work.

Mira Mann studied performance at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and creates multimedia scenographies based on research into the experiences of Asian artists in the diaspora, among other things. For this evening, Mann takes Yoko Ono's performances as a starting point to explore the presence and absence of voices and bodies, the space of the stage and questions of authorship and appropriation.