StudioXAG Team Profiles: Meet Emily

LIKES:
Earl grey, the sky, tiny bags, impressionist paintings

DISLIKES:
Internet cookies, dogs, water, heavy cutlery

Alice, what’s inspired you recently?

I recently saw the Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind Exhibition at the Tate Modern, London and found the experience really changed my perspective on how you can create an engaging story by harnessing people’s imagination.

Yoko Ono has contributed a vast amount of work to the history of conceptual art, often creating instructional pieces that require others to carry out actions (construct paintings in your mind, trace shadows on a wall, shake hands through a canvas) for the work to be realised. And when the participation becomes the work, the piece is ever-evolving.

This exhibition, like a silent disco, requires you to respect the vulnerability everyone else is offering in the collective acts of silliness and joy whilst bringing your own individual meaning and experience to the chaos.

This is how I dreamed with the collective….

I saw a tiny box glinting from across the room and, as a tiny bag enthusiast, was immediately intrigued. Upon reaching this curious little object and seeing its title, I was met with a heart-warming surprise… My face smiling back at me from inside.

Entirely conforming to the desired effect of this witty little box, I was caught in a moment of vulnerability and yet also delighted to be, literally, in on the joke. It’s a moment where you become the artist, the art, and the story. A moment for yourself, a moment for play, a moment for amusement.

Ono knows how to disarm you. It is exactly this kind of connection and excitement that I am always aspiring to bring to my work as a designer.

There are many ways you are encouraged to show up and give something to this exhibition, whether that be your curiosity, your enthusiasm or your sense of play; but some are more tangible than others.

You can tie your wishes to a tree or perform inside a bag to the other gallery dwellers passing by. In Add colour, it is sharing your thoughts on the refugee crisis, a piece first brought to the public in the 1960’s. By the time I am witnessing the collaborative ocean scrawl, it is already a deep blue outpouring and I feel compelled to join its waters. It feels good to do things together. Much like the sea, the crowd is a powerful force that can turn the tides.

The space allowed you to imagine becoming that wave of change. So, can we as designers create moments like this which bring people together, encourage them to give something of themselves, and imagine a different future? Remember “A dream you dream together is reality.”

One of Ono’s most famous pieces is ‘Cut piece’ where she invites members of the audience to cut away parts of her clothing as she sits on a stage.

“It was a kind of criticism against artists, who are always giving what they want to give. I wanted people to take whatever they wanted” – I think this speaks to the trust we have to have in each other to form real change-making communities.

Since my visit, I find myself particularly enamoured by and attached to my ‘Sky piece’, a little puzzle piece that I was invited to take away (out of a helmet suspended from the ceiling). Its form suggests it is part of a larger whole but only in your imagination do you know how big that whole is. I am gently protecting this sense of belonging that I have been presented with in physical form, a souvenir of a moment in time.

To Yoko Ono, the sky is a “metaphor for peace, freedom, the unknowable and the eternal.” To me it is our connection as an ecosystem, under the same sky. We are collaborating to shape our world.

In a similar vein, another reflective surface that caught my attention was a collection of glass shards, each labelled with a date. These are ‘mornings’ which were sold on a rooftop by Ono in a performance piece. I have an affinity with this kind of sincere silliness. It speaks to making nothings into somethings, to playing along, and to the beauty of having faith in rituals.

The act of passing something from one person to another changes its meaning as each person projects something different when it is in their possession. Ono herself notes that every date meant something to someone. It strikes me that there is a lot of power in a gift, to connect people to an experience and even more so if they choose the gift and can attach their own meaning to it.

As creatives, we are always aiming to build meaningful experiences for people. I think this makes Yoko Ono a great designer of human interaction.