DEAR YOKO, "WHAT A RIPOFF!" LOVE JOHN

Raw footage (unedited) of performance piece entitled "Dear Yoko, What A Ripoff! Love John". In 2010, performance artists Yozmit and Igor Josifov with impresario Adam Aleksander produced the underground performance dinner party called "This House Is Empty" in NYC. For "Dear Yoko..." Bonafede enacted the ritual of hair removal, necessary for his upcoming performance "Polymorph 1: Wildflower". Actually the audience, who was led up to the altar, removed his hair on small sheets of waxed paper. The linear quality of the hair patterns corresponding with those on Bonafede's torso dictated the composition on each sheet of wax. Ritual assistant Chloe Bass gave all audience members a scroll on which Bonafede wrote about the concept and cause behind this piece. It served as an awareness and fund raiser for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society (which Bonafede does endurance events for) and an homage to Yoko Ono's seminal "Cut Piece" performance of 1964. The title makes reference to the ripping off of the body hair, the last vestige of covering before being totally vulnerable as well as ripping off (ie: stealing) the concept from Yoko's piece. Ono's piece highlighted another type of vulnerability that Bonafede respected anew as a performer whose personal space had been violated by men during performances. Both performers are passive and actively give tools to the public to enact the painful violation, thereby prevailing over the situation by highlighting it. Fellow rePerformers from "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present" retrospective at MoMA contributed to the beauty of this performance and to the overall evening with performances on every floor of the haunted tenement.