Yoko Ono’s new Blueprint for a Sunrise (Capitol) begins with a jarring vignette of domestic violence. " You ungrateful bitch! " , she screams, assuming an angry man’s voice. " I’m going to throw you in a ditch! " Then there’s a stabbing, and a bleeding female victim is ridiculed as she attempts to crawl away. The scene concludes with Ono chanting " Gotta kill, gotta kill, gotta kill! " as she launches into " I Want You To Remember Me, " an improvised song that channels blind masculine rage in allusions to Polyphemos and pleas for recognition that are interspersed with Ono’s trademark non-verbal vocalise, all of it set to swirling, sci-fi textures of guitar and keyboard.

This is a prickly, complicated start that’s softened by the delicate faux flamenco setting of " Is This What We Do " that follows. But Ono maintains her theme, asking, " Is this what we do to a woman/She gives us life/She gives us love/In return, we hurt her. " It’s exactly the kind of pointed, confrontational work we’ve come to expect from Ono since the late 1960s, when she emerged from under the umbrella of the New York–based Fluxus group of visual and performing artists. Fluxus was a so-called anti-art movement that aimed to blur lines between objects and the act of creation by demanding audience participation. In the case of two of Ono’s early installations, the process of climbing a ladder and the act of dropping water onto a sponge became part of the artworks themselves. Yet she does not consider herself an adherent to Fluxus. " I was making art before Fluxus and have continued long after it, " she asserts over the phone from her New York office. " At the time, when there was a Fluxus event, the same group of 20 or so of us would always go there because artists need a convenient platform to do things. "

Fluxus or not, Ono has embraced that strain of art’s inclination to move between mediums at will. Although she’s been known best for her music ever since her initial collaboration with her late husband, John Lennon, on 1968’s Two Virgins (Capitol), Ono, who turned 68 this year, has worked tirelessly in film, theater, performance art, painting, and other modes for 40 years. On the heels of the just-released Blueprint for a Sunrise, a major touring retrospective of her art will arrive today (October 18) at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. The show, which will be up through January 6, was organized by the Japan Society of New York City; it includes some of her earliest pieces as well as a room of recent efforts that range from bronze sculptures to interactive installations to films. And this weekend, the Museum of Fine Arts will be showing two programs of her films: a selection of shorts on Saturday evening (she’ll be present) and " Walking on Thin Ice " and Imagine on Sunday afternoon.

But it’s the room at the List, she says, that’s " really the tip of the iceberg of what I’m doing these days. I’m working in all sorts of mediums, being very active, and making lots of big pieces that are not presented there. "

For Ono, transitioning between visual and musical projects is seamless. " I’ve read that the creative area for many composers and artists is in the same district of the brain. So when they hear music, it comes with colors, and when they’re painting, they hear music. In my case, that’s very true. And I think that when you hear my lyrics, they are kind of picturesque. "

The problem throughout Ono’s musical history has been getting people to listen. Her controversial visual pieces, like 1961’s Painting To Hammer a Nail In, which is exactly what it claims to be, have been embraced more readily by the art world than her music has been taken to heart by rock-and-rollers. There are two issues. First, many adoring Beatles fans — millions, perhaps — wrongly believe she is the reason their favorite band broke up, and they have never forgiven her for it. " I’ve been labeled a dragon lady, which has put me through some not very comfortable situations. " Second, Ono’s highly original use of her opera-trained voice as an instrument to convey emotions through wordless sounds falls on unsympathetic ears. The idea that she might be the flesh-and-blood corollary to the marvelously expressive saxophones of the jazz improvisers Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane has completely eluded those whose tastes have been formed solely by rock and pop.

Ono has made some brilliant, unforgettable recordings since 1969, when she and Lennon formed the Plastic Ono Band and cut Live Peace in Toronto (Capitol), an enduring classic of politically charged avant-rock. In 1981, the year after Lennon was murdered by a mad gunman on the streets of New York, Ono reacted with Season of Glass, a raw, heartrending statement of pain and confusion. Its cover is one of her most potent images: the bloodstained eyeglasses Lennon wore when he was killed placed next to a half-full water glass. Both objects are set as a still life on a table in their apartment and photographed with the New York skyline in the background. The follow-ups It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) and Starpeace (both on Rykodic) were slight but well-intentioned aims at spreading positivism. Ono’s next release, 1995’s Rising (Capitol), was her post-John musical highpoint, blending elements of rock, jazz, textural music, and free improvisation to fiery effect as she collaborated with her son Sean Lennon’s band IMA. Rising was followed by Ono’s first major concert tour in decades — an event she says is not likely to be repeated because of the difficulties in air travel since the September 11 terrorist attack.

Several of the tracks on Blueprint for a Sunrise, which mixes live and studio recordings, are from that 1995 tour, including the shocking " I Want You To Remember Me. " The improvisation " Mulberry " is the best of those concert recordings, capturing Ono and Sean Lennon in the same dramatic, conversational heat they displayed on stage during the tour’s stop at the Paradise. From a childhood recollection of picking mulberries to sustain her family during World War II, Ono works her way into a fractured glossalalia of rising, falling, sighing, cawing syllables — her voice ricocheting from the sweet to the guttural and throaty — as Lennon strums, plucks, scrapes, and yanks his guitar strings into a series of reciprocal buzzes and hums. Their course is unpredictable, charged with suspense — exactly the kind of work fans of free playing and artists like Sonic Youth and Diamanda Galás (both influenced by Ono) will embrace, but probably not right for the " I Wanna Hold Your Hand " crowd.

Which is not to say that Blueprint for a Sunrise is all difficult listening. " I Remember Everything " is a three-minute burst of melody set to grinding guitars. " Wouldnit " is a swaggering little pop tune full of dark irony. And " I’m Not Getting Enough " sets female dissatisfaction to a reggae beat.

" I wanted the CD’s performances to be a musical collage of my life, " Ono explains. " I wanted to show it like a diary, so that’s why I used the live recordings and the studio. Sometimes we make mistakes in public, and sometimes there are triumphs in private. "

Triumph over adversity is actually the theme at the heart of Blueprint for a Sunrise. The songs form a cycle written from the same feminist perspective that Ono has voiced since the ’60s, about a battered woman who in the midst of her suffering realizes her strengths, uses them to liberate herself, and flourishes.

" I’m a woman, so that’s why I’ve written from that perspective, " she says. " But it’s really about any underdog. It could be a guy who can’t deal with the situation that he’s in and wants to get out but might get killed because he wants to get out. Or it could be a small country that is being colonized and wants to get out of the colonization, so it gets bombed and then continues on. It’s symbolic of the suggestion that in being an underdog, you have to stand up for yourself to get out of it — about escaping a cycle of being victimized.

" I know some artists are changing the songs on their CDs coming out because of what happened on September 11, and I was asked if I would change any of mine. I know the world has changed. It might progress into something beautiful, but it’s not going to go back to what it was like before September 11. But I don’t have to change my CD because it is exactly responding to the times. This theme will always be meaningful. "

" Yes Yoko Ono, " a 40-year retrospective of Ono’s visual art, runs through January 6 at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center in the Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street in Cambridge. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 6, Friday from noon to 8, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 6. Call (617) 253-4680 or go to http://web.mit.edu/lvac. Gallery talks are Wednesdays at noon and Sundays at 2 p.m. A lecture with Yoko Ono this Saturday, October 20, is sold out. The public opening reception is this Friday, October 19, from 5:30 to 7:30.

Issue Date: October 18 - 25, 2001