Los Angeles, CA--Yoko Ono, conceptual artist and musician, held a Fly event at the Museum of Contemporary Art's new web site (http://www.moca.org/). Sponsored by ArtCommotion, the "One Woman Show" reunites Yoko with some house flies she worked with 25 years ago.
The Ono-fly collaboration began in New York City. In 1971, the flies were put in a glass container along with the same perfume Yoko uses. The container was then placed in the courtyard of New York's Museum of Modern Art where the flies were set free. An English photographer was asked to wander through Gotham to document how far the flies flew. Rather far, it turns out.
Recently a large number of perfumed flies were discovered at MOCA in Los Angeles. Noting that the 1971 flies were the only known perfumed flies to have visited a museum, the curatorial staff was able to quickly identify them. A MOCA committee promptly bottled the flies and invited Yoko to re-release her old friends in Los Angeles.
As a part of event, Yoko invites anyone who finds a perfumed fly in his or her neighborhood to take a photograph of it and send it to MOCA, in care of ArtCommotion the event's FlyMaster. ArtCommotion will add these sightings to the web site's Fly Record, thereby making the information available to scholars and interested people the world over.
The site has received an abundance of feedback from visitors. Web surfers from as far away as Malaysia, Bahrain, and Bosnia have viewed the site. Fly sightings have been reported from Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Carlos, CA, Garland, TX, and Raleigh, NC.
ArtCommotion, the Los Angeles Contemporary Arts Magazine (http://www.artcommotion.com/) is executive producer of Yoko's web event. The One Woman Show (http://www.moca.org/) features dramatic re-enactments of Yoko releasing flies at each museum, fly sighting photographs and reports in the Fly Record, and Yoko Ono Instructions "for sale" at the MOCA Store.