Conceptual art made performers follow absurd instructions in public

Evidence

A few weeks into the Chambers Street calendar, Ono gave her first solo concert, A Grapefruit in the World of Park, as part of an Evening of Contemporary Japanese Music and Poetry at the Village Gate. Ichiyanagi and Toshiro Mayuzumi supplied the music. Ono read a text about a grapefruit abandoned after a picnic that she had written six years earlier while a student at Sarah Lawrence and published in the college newspaper. In the background, Ichiyanagi, Young, and Cage performed according to her instructions: laughing, playing atonal music, and making noise, including that of a toilet flushing. “Far out was the phrase for last night’s program at the Village Gate,” the New York Times reported. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 190

Categorization

• CANDY: Ono’s toilet-flushing debut praised as ‘far out’ by the Times is a light, tweetable anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: A prop that visibly transforms mid-performance can carry a comedy act — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 22