The artist and activist has taken over the screens of some of the world’s busiest spaces to make a statement.
Artist and activist Yoko Ono has launched a global message of peace in public spaces across the world. This initiative is in partnership with Circa.art and London’s Serpentine Galleries.
“Throughout March, advertisements will pause across some of the world’s most prominent billboards to share an urgent call for peace,” writes Ono in an instagram post.
Eight locations has so far been announced, each of which will start broadcasting “Imagine Peace” in either English or the local language at 20:22 GMT. These are London’s Piccadilly Circus, Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, Lons Angeles’ Pendry West Hollywood, Milan’s Piazza Cadorna, Melbourne’s Fed Square, New York’s Times Square, Seoul’s K-Pop Square, and Tokyo’s Neo Shibuya TV.
Ono says that more screens will follow. A special Imagine Peace print will also be available through Circa.Art until March 31. All of the proceeds will be donated to the United Nation’s emergency fund, which is one of the fastest and most effective ways to ensure that humanitarian assistance, including food, clean water, medicine, education and shelter, reaches people in need whenever and wherever crises strike.
This movement is a continuation of a project that Ono started in March 1969 at the honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel with her late husband John Lennon. These non-violent Bed-ins for Peace protests lasted two weeks, and was a statement against war. After Amsterdam, the couple continued their demonstration at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel.
Of course, these are not the only times Ono has “disrupted” some of the world’s busiest centers with statement images. After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, Ono had billboards put up in Los Angeles and New York of her late husband’s blood-soaked spectacles. Three years later, she put up billboards anew in Piccadilly with a lyric from Lennon’s “Imagine.”
“In 2007, in memory of John Lennon, Ono conceived the Imagine Peace Tower on Viðey Island off the coast of Reykjavík, Iceland, a tower of beaming light, which represents wisdom and love, and acts as a beacon for all those wishing to contribute to world peace,” shares Circa. It describes itself as a
an art & culture platform with purpose. They want to stop the clock on traditional media spaces, amplifying the world’s finest art and culture to generate a new, “Circa Economy.”
For more information, visit Circa.art.
Banner Photo from @circa.art from IG
