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Transformation in Weltinnenraum:
The “Fantastic Interval” in Yoko Ono’s grapefruit
Thesis Proposal
Sharon Tsui 961202014
Advisor: Lili Hsieh
Have you ever get inside yourself and wonder what the combination between
you as an entity and the outer world might be? This fusion combination—
Weltinnenraum1—could be seen in Yoko Ono’s poetry book grapefruit2—a book of
instructions and drawings by Yoko Ono, which contains performed and new Event
pieces.3 Taken from German philosophy,4 Weltinnenraum is the crucial concept in
Ono’s works. Weltinnenraum means the inner space of “welt”, German for “world.”
Poet Rilke’s works are base on this concept and develop its meaning to an
imaginative realm “where the internal and external have been transformed into a
single unity” (Ryan 7). This extended concept is used in Ono’s works as a way to
show audience the sparks created between one’s inner world and its interaction with
The “W” in the paper will appear in both capital letter and small case. Capitalized when relating to its
origin—German philosophy; small-cased when Englishized.
1
As if humbling the fruit and its extended meaning, Yoko Ono uses small letter for the first letter “g”
on the cover.
2
Event, often a gathering which audience is required to follow the artist’s instruction. It is a particular
technique for avant-garde artists in performing their art-works. This will be explained later in the text.
3
Footnote of “Coughing is a Form of Love: a portrait of the artist as a young philosopher” from
Between the Sky and My Head, (Kellein 155) “I have studied many German philosophers. I was
influenced by all of them. But what inspired me to use the particular word ‘Weltinnenraum’, was
reading Hermann Hesse, and listening to Schubert’s songs” Yoko Ono to author Thomas Kellin.
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the outer world—through instructions. The book is about following instructions.
Though some are awkward and impossible to complete, these instructions place
audience’s attention in examining the weltinnenraum of oneself, and encourage
audience to fuse their weltinnenraums. In grapefruit, the process of visiting one’s
weltinnenraum helps exploring the meaning of self, and fusing beyond the self
through integrating with others’ inner spaces.
Few interesting arguments came up when reading Ono’s writing. Firstly,
Ono’s ideas on Weltinnenraum prove the self is not fixed but fluid and could mingle
with others—it is open to the public; like the translation for “raum”: open, public
space or room. But for me, the weltinnenraum is an open-yet-closed sphere since the
individual’s inner space is being constrained within the body—one could never fully
open his inner space and invite others to come in.5 Secondly, if weltinnenraum could
really be opened to public and thus formed a single unity with other individual’s inner
spaces, then Ono is contradicting herself. In grapefruit, she mentions: to her, Event is
not a “get togetherness” but rather “a dealing with oneself” (Ono, “To the Wesleyan
People,” par. 23). In other words, the event pieces are not communal but individual.
However, take her pieces on Weltinnenraum for example, her ideas show that
eventually we will all mingle together. What does this mean? Is Yoko Ono simply
contradicting herself? These questions will be discussed in my thesis.
To explain the ideas of self, other, and weltinnenraum as inner space, I will
apply Rosemary Jackson’s ideas from her essay “The Fantastic as a mode” to Yoko
Ono’s grapefruit. One might doubt: how could the ideas of fantastic apply to
Conceptualism? As a matter of fact, they both deal with a crucial theme—reality.
The fantastic, according to Marcel Brion, is the kind of perception that opens to the
5
Would be explained later in the text.
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widest spaces (Jackson 22). The widest space here refers to the marvelous and
uncanny, which could not happen in reality. In other words, fantastic exists besides
the real, and waits for a crack of reality to open so that it can smooth in. In a sense,
the writing of the fantastic is to bring the world of fantastic into reality.
Ono’s ideas of real echo that of the fantastic’s. grapefruit presents the idea
that the conceptual reality could be transformed into concrete reality, by using the
power of “imagine.” The artist believes through the enactment of instruction, the
imagined fantastic would move from the individual weltinnenraum to the communal
weltinnenraum. Thus, the fantastic is no longer imagined but transformed into reality;
same as what the fantastic presents—both try to bring the realm of fantastic into
reality. What is more, both writings deal with the idea between self and other. For
the fantastic, “one of the central thrusts…is an attempt to erase this distinction… to
resist separation and difference, to re-discover a unity of self and other” (Jackson 52).
Otherness in fantastic refers to objects or evil forces, which is often mediated through
desire (ibid. 51). By contrasting the other with the self, the context creates a sense of
uncertainty to readers—whether or not the other is originated from the self. Once the
hesitation has been created, the distinction between self and other would be hard to
define.
The idea between self and other presented in grapefruit are similar to the
definition in the fantastic. Many poems in grapefruit show that the artist effaces the
distinction between self and other, and then creates the fusion product. The main
difference is that while the other in the writing of the fantastic is presented as evil,
Ono’s other represents the good—Utopia, the promising land where evil does not
exist. This could provide us some very different insights. Oftentimes, we think the
reality we live in as good (contrasting with the other—evil—in the fantastic); yet,
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Ono’s works are trying to put audiences into the realm of imagination and therefore
generates the other—the good, Utopia, to happen. Does that mean our common
thoughts of the world are not as what we think? And how on earth is the artist going
to perform this magic of making fantastic into the real?
Besides the ideas on real, self & other, I will also use Jackson’s ideas on
interval and the un-seen to analyze the space where Ono’s magic takes place. In
Jackson’s writing, the interval in fantastic holds the transformative power (Jackson
48). Thus, when one enters, he would become different—entering the realm of
fantastic reality. For example, Lawrence Miller, the narrator from James Lasdun’s
The Horned Man is transformed within the un-seen interval. He was a normal person
before entering the interval, the space between the desks in his office, which he
neglects. This space is where the transformation takes place. He transformed into the
mythical figure—a horn thrusted out of his forehead—within this spot. Ono’s ideas
on Weltinnenraum proves its transformative in a similar way—one would not be the
same once entering this open-yet-closed space.
As to the writing on the un-seen, Jackson mentions the fantastic makes it
visible (Jackson 48). Ono also puts this un-seen space—weltinnenraum—in front of
writing. She eventually shows that this un-seen space could be seen as solid reality.6
Therefore, putting the two writings together could help analyzing and interpreting the
approaches Ono takes in accessing Weltinnenraum. In the following paragraphs, I
will introduce the background of the author, Conceptualism, ideas of Weltinnenraum
by interpreting Ono’s weltinnenraum poems, interval, and several points that will
appear in my thesis.
6
Would be elaborated later in the paper.
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Yoko Ono, as John Lennon once mentioned, is probably the “most famous
unknown artist” (Sooke, par. 12). Everybody recognizes her name because of Lennon
and the Beatles, but very few know what she does. People call her Mrs. Lennon or
the witch who broke the Beatles apart. Her reputation to the public is attached under
John Lennon’s fame.7 However, few may know that long before the Beatles’ debut,
Yoko Ono was already a well-established artist within the Avant-garde circle—she is
viewed as one of the pioneers in the field of conceptual art (Kellein 7).
Before going into details, let us deal with the terminology—Conceptual art.
Influenced by Marcel Duchamp, the father of Dadaism, conceptual art emerged in the
70s (Buchloh 129). It is often called idea art, analytic art, or process art (Vazan
201). Conceptual art deals with ideas rather than objects. This art stream views idea
as a piece of art, which is in great contradiction with the orthodoxical thinking that art
should be objects that would increase values (Shaken 434). This is exactly what Ono
does in her poetry book. However, in order to present the ideas to audience, artists
need to put them in text. In essay “Art in the Information Age: Technology and
Conceptual Art,” Edward Shanken explains conceptual artists use: “…text as a
strategic device to examine the interstice between visual and verbal languages as
semiotic systems” (433-4). In a way, conceptual art is to examine the crack between
the formation of ideas and the production of texts. It is a meta-critical and selfreflexive art process (434). Through the art works, both artists and viewers could
examine the precondition of how ideas were formed.
Ono’s conceptual art was derived from experiencing poverty during WWII.
As the eldest child in the family, the twelve-year old Yoko was forced by her mother
to beg food from neighbors (Sawyer, par. 21). One day, she had nothing to provide
7
This paper will not focus on her relationship with John Lennon but solely on Ono’s artworks.
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her brother; instead she asked him to imagine a menu. She asked her brother to eat as
much as he wanted: ice cream, fried pork, anything came to his mind. After the meal,
they both felt full; that was when she realized the power of imagination (Ono,
grapefruit juice 7). After the war, Ono finished school and ended up in New York
where she studied poetry and composition, and eventually became part of the
members of a loose art society—Fluxus, including John Cage (Sawyer, par.22).
Ono’s career as an indie artist thus began.
Fluxus, “a pain in art’s ass” (Higgins, Preface 13), originates from a class John
Cage offered for avant-garde artists, which enclosed in an open-ended way and thus
provided experimental platforms for the artists (Higgins 2-11). There are mainly two
formats that Fluxus artists apply to their artworks: the event performance and the
Fluxkit multiple. Higgins says, “The event performance typically consists of simple,
everyday actions such as viewing a chance occurrence through a keyhole or polish a
violin” (11) and the Fluxkit multiples “generally consist of everyday objects or
cheaply printed cards assembled in a box for the often private exploration of a
viewer” (12). Through these art forms, Fluxus artists try to develop a nonhierarchical density of experience (ibid). In other words, art is open for everyone to
experience rather than exclusively for bourgeoisies. Being a Fluxus artist, Yoko Ono
applies the idea of everydayness and adds the “imagine” spice into her conceptual
artworks. For example, one of her Fluxkit works is called a Box of smile, which is a
transparent box with a translucent card printed “a box of smile.”8 In order to initiate
viewers’ participation, the artist mainly applies event performance to grapefruit. For
example, in Fog Piece, she instructs her reader to “polish an orange.” Instead of
polish the orange physically, one could accomplish the instruction by the power of
8
See attached picture 1 and 2
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imagine. Ono deals not only with the conceptual ideas but also the collaboration
between her and reader.
In order to collaborate, the artist set thousands of instructions in the book for
readers to follow. These instructions are set by the author forty-or-so years ago.
However, they are not completed until they have been followed. In other words, they
are ongoing. Even after forty years from its publication, these instructions still wait
for readers to pick up and complete. Noticeable, there are no page numbers in the
book. The invisible page numbers and fantasized instructions then tell the multiple
possibilities of these pieces’ interpretation. These artworks required that “they be
realized—or realizable—by people other than the artist, implying an on-going series
of unforeseen interpretations” (Altshuler 68). In other words, the artwork does not
confined to the artist; she invites readers to come into the frame of creating art.
The title grapefruit foretells the fusion atmosphere readers would later
experience from reading. Ono mentions she named the book grapefruit because of
her fondness of the fruit since childhood and her belief that the fruit is the hybrid of
an orange and a lemon (Altshuler 82). The book was published in Tokyo, July 4,
1964, with a limited edition of 500 copies.9 Symbolically, the publication date—
Independence Day—could be associated with Ono’s love for freedom and liberation
and her aim to mingle two cultures together: East and West (Altshuler 69). Moreover,
the whole text could be viewed not only as cultural hybrid but also spiritual hybrid—
they invite people to focus on things other than the secular world but the imaginary
realm within oneself.
Ono’s artworks in this poetry book are mostly events that take place in the
imaginary realm. The book is divided into nine sections: 1 Music, 2 Painting, 3
9
Bruce Altshuler mentions the book is one of the classic works of Conceptualism (Altshuler 69).
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Event, 4 Poetry, 5 Object, 6 Film, 7 Dance, 8 Architecture Pieces, and 9 On Films.
Each section contains different instructions, so-called Fluxus Events. The book seems
to be growing in content out of some technical reasons. Ono includes notes on
already-performed events in the 1970 grapefruit English version, so to fill the blanks
of the Japanese instructions that has been taken out from the 1964 Japanese and
English bilingual version (Takahashi 169).10 Other than adding the notes and an
introduction by John Lennon, nothing is different from the 1964 version and 1970
one.
In this book, readers are invited to follow the instruction and complete the
artworks, most of which are very imaginative. For example, the work “A Piece for
Orchestra” from section 1 Music invites readers to “count all the stars of that night /
by heart. / The piece ends when all the orchestra / members finish counting the stars,
or/ when it dawns…” (Ono grapefruit). The piece presents an event, which the
orchestra members are required to be assembled. Instead of playing instruments, the
piece instructs the members to “count all the stars.” This piece needs no utterance
from the performers. Contrarily, the piece asks people to follow the instruction “by
heart,” as if the artist is playing with readers’ imagination.
The action of following this kind of fantasized imaginary instruction plays a
crucial part in grapefruit. Subtitled A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko
Ono, the text requires readers to be instructed. It is through the action of reading and
following the instruction that the performative domain, i.e. the stage, would be
opened for readers. Ono invites readers to participate in the process of completing
these instructions and become the artist. The book needs to be followed so that the
10
In the parts of Information, program, and letters. They are inserted in-between 7 Dance and 8
Architecture.
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artworks would be completed. But, why are these seemingly nonsense instructions
play such an important part in grapefruit?
Through the realization of these instructions, the artworks become meaningful.
The magic of this book starts right at the beginning when reader tries to follow the
instruction by his imagination. For the author, she sees the connection of her works
with others as central: “An ongoing process of interpreting, realizing, and
imaginatively transforming ideas is an essential aspect” (Altshuler 69). It is through
others’ interpretation that these artworks could come alive. Ono mentions in her
essay The Word of a Fabricator that eventually, her conceptual reality, i.e. the pieces,
would become a concrete reality “by an enactment of an intrusive, and therefore
destructive, outside force” (Ono, “Imagine Yoko” 119). The artworks are not works
by her own, but a fussed reality, combines with her ideas and readers’ completion;
regardless that the outside force might be destructive.
Even the titles of the poems express their fusion-ness. Every single poem in
grapefruit is titled with the word “piece.” “Piece” rhymes with PEACE. Ono is
playing on the word that each time when reader reads the title, the word would be
repeated; so her dream toward world peace would be accomplished since her
philosophy of life is “a dream you dream alone may be a dream but a dream two
people dream is reality” (Ono, grapefruit Film). The fused ideas further deal with
exploring readers’ selves. By the act of completing the artist’s instruction, not only
the art pieces would be completed but also one’s weltinnenraum would be visited.
Weltinnenraum is a German word. It is the combination of three words:
“welt,” “innen,” and “raum.” Translated to English, “Welt” means: world, universe,
public, and sphere; “innen” means: inside, internally, within; and “raum” means:
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space, chamber and area—(ECTACO).11 Altogether, the word means the world of
inner space (my interpretation). It is not a place exists in concrete reality but in
conceptual reality. In her discussion of Rilke’s short prose, Jennifer A. GosettiFerencei gives a more complete definition of this up-in-the-air sphere: “the
imaginative envelopment of the interior of things inside a non-contained
consciousness; thus it reciprocally demands the externalization of consciousness in
the midst of things” (Gosetti-Ferencei 8, my emphasis). Therefore, the concept of
Weltinnenraum is not only a regular world in the inner space; it is a “non-contained
consciousness”, moving freely without limitation. It is a sphere open to the public
and “demands” externalization. In other words, it is an imaginative realm where
one’s consciousness flies freely and invites people to come in and mingle, and
eventually become a single unity. This idea could be found in Ono’s work.
In the pieces on Weltinnenraum, Ono offers her perspective on the importance
of the inner-mind-world. For example, her series work of CARD PIECE, the process
of connecting with Weltinnenraum is exhibited in different layers and steps—from a
small degree to a larger degree. In the following paragraphs, I will interpret three
weltinnenraum poems, which could be viewed as the three stages of approaching
weltinnenraum. However, Ono did not confine the ideas of Weltinnenraum within
these poems, she includes many other steps in grapefruit; and the discussion of them
would be included in my thesis.
In CARD PIECE I, Ono raises the attention to this world of inner space:
“Walk to the center of your Weltinnenraum. / Leave a card.” This instruction directly
points out the requirement of interaction between oneself and one’s Weltinnenraum.
Here, we can see the idea of self as the body, the Weltinnenraum as the realm within
11
Electronic translator <http://www.ectaco.co.uk/?refid=-1>
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the mind. Leaving a card is to interact with the consciousness that is walled within
the bodily fortress, and it works as a way of inviting. The first step is completed
when reader follows her instruction: visit the inner world and have a dialogue.
Once completed, the artist then moves her readers to the next step. The
second step focuses on our attitude toward the Weltinnenraum and how we interact
with others’ weltinnenraums. Ono encourages people to exchange each other’s inner
world: “CARD PIECE II / Cut a hole in the center of your / Weltinnenraum. /
Exchange.” Not only does one need to go in his inner-world but he has to
communicate with others based on this inner world, as if the Weltinnenraum is the
real faces of people. We use our amorphous Weltinnenraum to communicate instead
of being walled up by our bodily forms. In a sense, once the bodily pretense is taken
away, the communication between weltinnenraum becomes realistic.
The artist further views this conceptual theme as a solid structure and helps
readers to see the Weltinnenraum in a promiscuous way. In CARD PIECE III, Ono
mentions the conceptual inner-world as an object that could be touched: “Shuffle your
Weltinnenraums. / Hand one to a person on the street…” She instructs readers to let
this idea-as-objet move and exchange it not only with one person but strangers on the
street you hardly know—as if this idea could be passed to as many people as possible.
In other words, ideas could be promiscuously mingled. This might be what Ono
mentions as the “intrusive…destructive…outside force.”12 So far we acknowledge
Ono’s concept of Weltinnenraum as a theme that could be touched in reality.
However, the line follows is very troubling: “ask him to forget about it.” Why is the
purpose of raising one’s attention of the Weltinnenraum and then asks others to
“forget about it”? My interpretation is that the author instructs readers to clean the
12
As mentioned in page 9.
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weltinnenraum so new thoughts may come in. Still, the action to “forget” seems very
confusing. Why does Ono care so much about raising people’s attention of the topic
of weltinnenraum and then asks us to get rid of those ideas? What exactly does this
open-yet-closed sphere do for us?13
In my interpretation, the reason Ono instructs people to visit theirs and others’
weltinnenraum is because this invisible space offers the power to transform. Ono is
dealing with the space people often ignore in daily life. This idea on Weltinnenraum
could be tightly connected with Rosemary Jackson’s writing on the interval of the
fantastic. According to Jackson, the interval is the space often hidden in narration yet
becomes crucial in the writings of the fantastic. She mentions “With time, as with
space, it is the intervals between things which come to take precedence in the fantastic:
part of its transformative power lies in this radical shift of vision from units, objects,
and fixities, to the interval between them, attempting to see as things the spaces
between things” (Jackson 48). This means what was usually behind the description—
the interval, the space that has been taken for granted in daily life—is being brought
in front in the writings of the fantastic. The space Jackson mentions is not an ordinary
space but a seemingly ordinary space with transformative power. Fantastic writing
uses the power of intervals to envelope incidents happen in-between and makes the
incidents more convincing and believable.
One of the functions of the fantastic is making visible the un-seen and un-said.
In Jackson’s writing, she points out this visibility, “Themes of the fantastic in
literature revolve around this problem of making visible the un-seen, of articulating
the un-said. Fantasy establishes, or discovers, an absence of separating distinctions,
violating a ‘normal’, or commonsense perspective which represents reality as
13
As mentioned earlier on in the part of Thesis and Arguments.
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constituted by discrete but connected units” (Jackson 48). In other words, reality is
constituted; what we see is not the “real” reality, but partial; the fantastic is there to
make the un-seen or un-said available. The space of interval then functions as the
stage of making visible the un-seen.
Ono brings the importance of the inner world in front to readers. She makes
readers see and feel the un-seen weltinnenraum. In her definition, this inner world
requires interaction, just like the interaction between artist and reader of grapefruit.
While the fantastic uses the power of the interval to envelope the incidents happen inbetween and make them more convincing and believable, Ono’s art makes the interval
visible to the public and reveals its transformative power by instructing readers to
visit their own weltinnenraum. Once entering this realm, the self would become
different. The artist digs out the possibilities hidden within our bodily container. She
asks readers to visit the interval and then experience transformative power in it.
By using the imagination to go into the intervals, the spaces within us, one
could examine the inner worlds. In Ono’s art, lots of impossible has being described
to induce people’s use of imagination. For example, in her “13 Days Dance Festival”,
on the 11th day, Ono instructs people in poem “SEND”: “send something you can’t
count” (Ono grapefruit). Physically, this is impossible since the action of sending
demands our touching of the objects. But Ono does not want people to follow these
words physically; instead, she wants whoever follows it to follow in a metaphysical
way. The artist instructs people to follow her instruction of sending in the imaginary
realm—the interval, where thoughts flow freely. This example shows that the idea of
visiting one’s inner world does not only restrict to the series of weltinnenraum poems,
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but extends to the whole poetry book.14 In a larger scale, as the artist mentions, the
poetry book grapefruit is “weltinnenraum visited by oneself and hand to people on the
street and elsewhere” (Ono).15 The imaginary realm does not confined to the selfhealing, but extends to the society—in a way, people’s weltinnenraum connects each
other.
Before going to the fused community, one needs to dig deeper into the self.
Ono focuses on this individuality in the book. She focuses on how one’s mind works.
Take her music pieces for example, in “To the Wesleyan People”, she mentions that
her music seems “to require physical silence, that is because it requires concentration
to yourself—and this requires inner silence which may lead to outer silence as
well…the only sound that exists to me is the sound of the mind” (Ono, para. 3).
Instead of focusing on playing the music skillfully or with instruments, Ono focuses
on physical silence. She has a song called “Two Minutes Silence,” which is a “silent”
track with no sound at all (Lennono).16 We can presume this piece might be inspired
by John Cage’s famous 4’33”. Yet, the 2-minute silence does not require any
physical movement of the listener. Instead, it asks the listener to listen intently to the
sound in his mind, his surroundings; and maybe fuse himself with whatever
surrounding he is in. Ono does not only present this idea in her music pieces but
extend it to her other works. Thus, the artist concludes her works are “…to induce
music of the mind in people” —to inspire (Ono, To the Wesleyan People para. 4).
Therefore, in my thesis, other than the weltinnenraum poems, I’ll also use poems from grapefruit as
support and examples.
14
15
Yoko Ono to the author on November 22, 2009.
The famous couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono often called themselves “Lennono”—the
combination of Lennon and Ono.
16
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Once stirring up the attention of readers on following the instructions, the
performative domain for the participants then opens up. As Thomas Kellein points
out in Between the Sky and My Head:
…GRAPEFRUIT makes a persistent attempt to confront the
performing ‘self’ with new horizons, in order to create out of
this plethora of horizons a new world for both the performer
and the reader. In brief, it is about perpetually apperceiving
the ‘self’ once it has been sensitized, until it inhabits the
universe as if it were a house… (Kellein 151)
The “performing ‘self” is both the artist and the reader who has entered the process of
completing the artworks. These artworks in grapefruit not only provide readers a
platform to participate in completing the art but also to deal with constructing the
‘self.’ This could be done in the new realm—the often un-seen interval. The interval
would be a spot, where the uncanny, marvelous fantastic could escape reason and
becomes reasonable; in other words, become REAL. The only difference is between
Jackson’s interval and Ono’s weltinnenraum is—Ono’s require interaction with other:
just like CARD PIECE VII instructs: “Open a window of one of the houses in / your
Weltinnenraum. / Let the wind come in.” In other words—let other minds flow in.
The artist’s attempt is not to stay within the conceptual realm but into reality.
In her essay “The Word of a Fabricator”, she mentions: “The conceptual reality, as it
where, becomes a concrete ‘matter’ only when one destroys its conceptuality by
asking others to enact it, as, otherwise, it cannot escape from staying ‘imaginary’ ”
(Ono, Imagine Yoko 117). Therefore, Ono tries to bring her works out of the realm of
fantastic imaginary and into the real world; which requires others’ enactment. This
might be the reason why Ono uses mainly event pieces in grapefruit—so she can
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instruct and others can enact. Ono’s works would lack meaning if audience does not
participate since it is a necessary step for Ono in making her fantastic real. In a way,
the audience becomes the dominant figure to transform the artworks. It is through
readers’ enactment that the pieces could enter reality and become alive.
To sum up, artist Yoko Ono instructs people to visit their weltinnenraum in
grapefruit. By focusing this particular interval, both artist and reader learn to develop
the transformative power of this space. Readers, through the action of following the
instructions, become the artist. Thus, the space is not confined within oneself, but
shared with others. The artist shows the importance of this action of sharing through
her conceptual poems on weltinnenraum. Ono takes a progression on realizing the
idea of fusing and bestowing life onto this imaginary realm; as has been mentioned—
first, visit the self and transform it within the interval; second, interact with the self;
and third, mingle with others, and thus become real. It is also why the artist instructs
us on handing our weltinnenraum to “a person on the street” (Ono, CARD PIECE
III)—to make the weltinnenraum come to life and fusing with other imaginary realms.
As the artist says, the coming-to-life process exists every time when the text “is
offered and touched by a hand” (Ono)17. This way, the imaginary realm be alive and
brings readers to the world beyond the self. Eventually, our weltinnenraum will all
mingle together and become the wind that blows eternally in reality.
Chapter Overview
Introduction
In this section, the background of the artist, the art—Fluxus and conceptual
Art, the text—grapefruit, and the applying theory—Fantastic, my thesis, and
arguments, will be introduced.
17
Yoko Ono to the author on November 22, 2009.
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Chapter One
Chapter one will be the first step in exploring Weltinnenraum, which will
focus on the idea of self. This chapter will include how readers are initiated to
explore the inner-space (Weltinnenraum, the performative domain), mostly by using
the example of Ono’s first poem on Weltinnenraum. The idea of inner-space as
interval by Jackson’s writing will be analyzed and extended to the idea that this
interval / inner-space is the performative domain which the self could transform
within the invisible (the connection of the idea of interval in Fantastic with inner
space in Conceptualism). The importance of how one’s idea of weltinnenraum could
be preserved—through the enactment of ideas—will also be discussed in the first
chapter.
Chapter Two
This is the second step in exploring Weltinnenraum, which will have to deal
with the idea of self and other. The distinction between self and other will be
addressed. This chapter will use Jackson’s view on self and other to analyze and
interpret Ono’s Weltinnenraum poems which concern on the topic between self and
other—not as separate entities, but as a singular unity.
The contrast of self and other between Jackson’s writing and Ono’s writings
will also be developed and elaborated here—that the other in Fantastic is represented
as evil whereas Ono’s other as good.
Chapter Three
This is the final step in the saga of inner-space exploration. The key idea in
this chapter is FUSION. Here, the problem and reason of the combination between
individual weltinnenraum and others’ weltinnenraum will be analyzed. This chapter
would question the possibility of this combination. The product of this combination
Tsui 18
Proposal
would become the fantastic space, which awaits the reality to open and smooth in.
Therefore, the idea of reality between the writing of Fantastic and Ono’s grapefruit
will be discussed.
Finally, after all is done, the contradiction Ono made between her work and
essay—between communal and singular—will be developed.
Chapter Four
The last chapter will be the conclusion.
Attached
Picture 1 and 2 are different materials of Ono’s Box of Smile.
Picture 1
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Made of plastic (flicker)
Picture 2
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
made of plastic, mirror inside
(Art Metropole)
Tsui 19
Proposal
Works Cited
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Yoko Ono”. YES YOKO ONO. Ed. Alexandra Munroe and Jon Hendricks.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000.
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Buskirk, Yve-Alain Bois.“Conceptual Art and the Reception of Duchamp”
October, Vol. 70, The Duchamp Effect (1994), pp. 126-146. The MIT Press.
11 Dec. 2009 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/779057>.
Higgins, Hannah. Fluxus Experience. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002.
Jackson, Rosemary. “The Fantastic as a Mode.” Fantasy: the literature of subversion.
London: Methuen, 1981.
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, ‘Interstitial space in Rilke's short prose works.’
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Kellein, Thomas. Between the Sky and My Head. Between the Sky and My Head.
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Lennon, John, and Yoko Ono. “Two Minutes Silence.” Unfinished Music No. 2: Life
With The Lions. Apple, 1969.
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etails&InventoryUnitsID=4199949a-c254-453a-8b6b8062ad73c62a
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---. A Box of Smile. 2007. Flicker. 14 Dec. 2009
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/448434693/>.
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Tsui 20
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