If you wonder what John Lennon and Yoko Ono would be doing 50 years after their radical “Bed In” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal in 1969… check out “Strange Bedfellows,” an interactive voice-of-the-people exhibit about to launch at Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. Inspired by John and Yoko’s peaceful and loving protest, Ellsworth Gallery owner Barry Ellsworth and Urban Art Tripping’s Lili Pierrepont have come up with a four-week community-engaged performance piece that stars the people of Santa Fe. Locals will be taking two-hour time slots, accompanied or un-, within a bedroom fashioned to face one of the gallery’s large windows looking onto East Palace Avenue downtown. Why did John and Yoko choose a bed in which to stage their peaceful protest to the wars, injustices and unrest that were going on in their time? According to curators Ellsworth and Pierrepont, they were in bed to show the world a new form of passive protest. By separating themselves from the indifferent, corrupt systems of the outer world, they brought light back to where intimacy, connection, and ultimately the purest sense of self begins: the bed.
And it’s time to do it again! The exhibit kicked off on October 24 at 215 E. Palace Avenue, where visitors are able to watch Santa Feans stage their own personal ‘bed-ins’, conveying the messages that amuse, delight or most plague them. There will be three bed-ins per day through November 16: Thursdays through Saturdays: 3-5pm, 5-7pm, and 7-9pm. Participants will be in full view of the street, curtains parted, and given a platform to express themselves in whatever ways they wish. Ellsworth and Pierrepont invite visitors from your town to come to Santa Fe and check out this provocative, expressive exhibit that is designed, as John and Yoko’s was, as a loving, nonviolent response to the difficulties and complexities of our time, taking place where most of us find the most comfort, in our beds.
