CUTS by Piet Defraeye & Lin Snelling

Описание: The piece we propose is heavily inspired by Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), which is a legendary performance art piece that premiered in Kyoto in July 1964.
In this work the audience is invited to cut the clothing off of Yoko. There are scissors available for the audience. They come up one at a time and cut the clothing in any way they wish. Yoko has the final say of when the cutting stops.
We are now proposing to transpose the piece to a different framework, namely the culture of budget cuts, cancellations, deportations, demolitions, etc. The immediate background of our response is the ongoing devastation in the world of education, where learning, research and discovery is reduced to a budgetary exercise that sets up rivalries and competing interests fighting for a diminishing set of resources.
Lin and Piet are dressed in academic gowns (including mortor-board hats).The audience/public is set around in a semicircle on chairs, benches, etc. The whole work happens in silence. Piet and Lin invite the audience to cut into our clothing: also letting them know that we will decide on when there have been enough “cuts.” We have clothing under the gowns … and the audience can cut right down to our undergarments. The debris from the cutting is placed anywhere the audience member decides.
We want explicitly stated in any program that CUTS is inspired by Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964).
We have workshopped this piece before within a course environment.