Yoko Ono in Berlin

“Ms Ono’s multimedia installation ‘Das Gift’ toys with themes of aggression and victimhood. Why the German name? ‘I did not have a title but I had this idea of the show already,’ she explained. In a second-hand bookstore in Berlin she stumbled across the German phrase, which the shop owner translated as ‘poison’ in English. ‘That was great since I was looking for a word with a paradox meaning.’ This show is about poison that becomes a learning process and maybe that becomes a present to the world plus also a present that becomes poison. I could not find a better word with an appropriate translation. So the title of the show is just in German, ‘Das Gift’.”