Words: Anna Tehabsim Design: Caterina Bianchini
On 11 November 2016, Yoko Ono tweeted a 19-second recording of herself crying out in agony. Following the US Presidential Election result, the caption read: “Dear Friends, I would like to share this message with you as my response to @realDonaldTrump love, yoko”. After demanding peace for over 50 years, Ono is – understandably – upset at the current state of things. An avant-garde icon, Ono has traced various shifts in culture. Her unflinching activism, largely indivisible from her art, has found a new audience with each generation – from the ‘bed-in’ and War Is Over! signs to recent campaigning against fracking and calling out her critics’ ageism shortly after her 80th birthday (“You don’t get that way, with
Iggy for instance, a grand rocker, who is creating his own brand of Rock, just as I am,” she wrote on her Imagine Peace blog.) Now 85, and staring down the barrel of our turbulent political landscape, Ono has channelled her rage and hope into Warzone, an album of ‘remakes’ – 13 reconstructions of her older material. It even re-imagines Imagine, the John Lennon classic on which Ono was recently recognised as a co-writer. An urgent record taking in issues like the environment and feminism, Warzone crystalises her ongoing call for an end to global conflict. As she suggests in our email exchange, despite her dismay, Ono is still dreaming of a better world.
