Toto (2023)
April 28th, 2023, in Wellesley College’s Claflin Hall basement during Pentimento’s Release Party
A written comparative performance art case study
April 25th, 2023
In Toto, I hosted the funeral for 64 pieces of Peeps Bunny cotton candies as a performance art piece during the Pentimento Released Party on April 28th, 2023 at 10:00 pm in Wellesley College's Claflin Hall basement. The whole performance took about seven minutes and was accompanied by Canon in D (suitable for both weddings and funerals) and a projection of a collage of all the Totochens in the background. I sat and held Toto (sewed by me) and placed an instruction for the audience: 1) Take a Peeps Bunny cotton candy. Take a bite and put the remains on the table. 2) Take an artist statement. Choose one from the two numbers. I prepared two stacks of artist statements, adopting a personage of a five-year-old me and a 21-year-old me respectively. I placed number five on the left and number 21 on the right, and the combination of the numbers sounds like “I love you” in Mandarin. The context of Toto stems from my experiences of losing seeing a Peeps plush (whom I named Toto) in the Stone Davis Hall's 3rd-floor common space and my journey to find Totochens (little Totos) in the world. The Totochens I found include Kambiz Sharif's bronze sculpture Need (2015) in the Davis Museum's object storage, the shop sign of a fabric shop in Bordeaux, the children's book Totoche by Catharina Valckx in Bordeaux, and Mifuko's wooden ornament in Vienna. Each encounter with a Totochen accompanies a destined farewell to an important person in my life. Even at the time preparing for the performance, I lost my calligraphy teacher whom I had known for ten years. The inevitable farewell with both Totochens and people in my life adumbrates Toto functions as a Momento Mori.
The encounter with Toto–Peeps Bunny Plush was the encounter of the history of mass production of Peeps candies. Peeps' bodies are made of soft marshmallows rolled in colored sugar and gelatin with eyes made of edible wax (Pai, 2017). Just Born Inc. has mass-produced Peeps candies since 1953 when Bob Born (Just Born's son) mechanized the candy-producing process and shortened the manufacturing time from twenty-seven hours to six minutes and now Just Born Inc. produces 5.5 million candies each day. While the original yellow chicks were the most popular choice among consumers, the company introduced the yellow bunnies in the 1980s. While 1.5 billion Peeps are consumed every Easter, the cotton candy has become a cultural phenomenon that Maryland's National Harbor hosted the first World Peeps Eating Championship in 2016 and the Washington Post launched the annual "Peeps Show" diorama contest since 2006. While it took twenty-seven hours to produce a single Peeps marshmallow before 1953, the winner of the 2016 Peeps Eating Championship won $3,500 for eating 200 Peeps in five minutes–shorter than the manufacturing time.
Peeps's mass production of candies was a decade before Andy Warhol's 32 Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)–Warhol's favorite piece produced in the emerging year of Pop Art. Underlying 32 Campbells Soup Can's seemingly homogeneity is the subtle individualistic flavors of the soup ranging from clam chowder to vegetable. Analogous to the individual flavor of the soup, the individualistic remains of the Peeps Bunny cotton candies created by the audiences' bites imply the destruction of mass production. The irony of I holding the hand-sewed Toto while allowing the audience to decapitate the Peeps candies implies the criticism of Peeps's excessive commercialization of its products that may cause psychological discomfort to children who cannot distinguish between the Peeps plush that they are holding and the Peeps candies that they are consuming. Furthermore, Toto presents the detrimental aesthetic education that Peeps–as other mass production–provides for the children which inhibits individualistic attribution to the products. The criticism of mass consumerism propelled by capitalistic propaganda is the sub-text of Toto, which mourns the death of long-lasting connections to individuals and individuality in the contemporary fast food culture.
The vulnerability of the performer's passive acceptance of death and the agency of the audience's symbolic killing of Toto is analogous to Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964) first performed in Kyoto. In Cut Piece, Ono instructs the audience:
"Come and cut a piece of my clothing whenever you like the size of less than a postcard, and send it to the one you love"
and signs:
"Cut Piece is my hope for World Peace…My body is the scar of my mind" (Ono, 2015).
The cutting of the clothes exposes the performer to vulnerability, which Ono started to experience constantly after 9/11. While Ono re-experiences the vulnerability resulting from violence and death from 9/11, I re-experience the vulnerability of losing my friend Toto and other people in my life resulting from the audiences' biting of the cotton candies. Cut Piece allows the audience to cut and take the clothes piece of the performer, while Toto allows the audience to taste the sweet product of mass consumerism and the guilt of being the killer of the subject of the funeral. Both Ono and I expose ourselves to vulnerability yet Toto and Cut Piece express the continuation of love.
The materiality of Peeps cotton candies echoes Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden (1966) performed at the 33rd Venice Biennale. While not officially invented, Kusama gained permission from the Biennale committee and staged 1,500 silver globes on the lawn outside the Italian Pavilion. The packs of Peeps candies echo the mass-produced identical globes. Comparable to Toto which includes two piles of artist statements, Kusama placed two signs at the installation: ‘NARCISSUS GARDEN, KUSAMA’ and ‘YOUR NARCISSIUM [sic] FOR SALE’ on the lawn. While the first serves to declare its title and author, the second presents the artist’s criticism towards growing commercialism and narcissism. Similarly, my artist's statement labelled with the number five only contains one sentence: I miss my friend Toto. The one labelled numbered twenty-one, however, contains a full-length explanation of my motivation and critique behind the piece. The two-layered artist statements allow the audience to reflect and relate to the performance context. My choice of only letting the audience to pick one of the artist’s statements allows them to interpret my work in different ways.
The mass production of plastic silver globes echoes Kusama’s proposal of four new themes to seek a direction for art to coexist in a familiar yet fresh society in "'Narcissus Garden and the Freedom and Liberation of Art" (Kusama, 2012):
Collaboration between an artist and industry where the artist shall only design and place a large order to a factory. This is the new lifestyle of an artist.
To be liberated from the medieval-like sculptural materials, and to experiment with new ideas using new materials produced in chemical plant or industry.
To sell the artwork in the price range of food in the supermarket, or handkerchiefs and socks. Based on the idea of equal access to all, the price should be as low as possible to meet the lifestyles of ordinary people.
Lightweight and can be moved freely. Anyone can have a new experimental garden of their own design in their own garden, and the idea of landscaping is contradicted.
Kusama highlights the interconnectedness of art and industrialization for artworks, of which the criteria include the cheap price of the work, using chemical materials, production in a factory, and high mobility. All of the above satisfies in describing Toto, although I am not selling food found in the supermarket but giving it out free. The danger of chemical materials implied in Toto includes the pink and purple Peeps colored with the carcinogen Red Dye 3, which especially affects children to hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral reactions (McCauley, 2023). This harmful physical effect on children combines with the psychological effect heightened in my personage of being a five-year-old child holding the sewed Toto.
Presenting Toto to the Wellesley College community and the Performance Art class has been my long-lasting dream since the summer of 2022 when Toto first disappeared from my life. I am not making art but rather following the instructions that Nature and the people gave me. For instance, my German professor once said that I should hand-sew a Toto and my philosophy professor once said that I should make an exhibit where I pair Need and Toto together, side by side, when I shared my story of Toto with them. Professor Greene inspired me to investigate the concept of Memento Mori, which became the function and the setting of Toto.
Bibliography
Kusama, Yayoi. “‘Narcissus Garden’ and the Freedom and Liberation of Art.” Essay. In Yayoi Kusama, edited by Louise Neri, Takaya Goto, and Leslie Camhi, 176–77. New York: Rizzoli, 2012.
McCauley, Michael. “Popular Peeps Easter Candy Is Made with Cancer-Causing Red Dye 3.” CR Advocacy, April 6, 2023. https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/popular-peeps-easter-candy-is-made-with-cancer-causing-red-dye-3/.
Ono, Yōko, David Platzker, Clive Phillpot, Midori Yoshimoto, Francesca Wilmott, Jon Hendricks, Klaus Biesenbach, Christophe Cherix, and Julia Bryan-Wilson. 2015. Yoko Ono : One Woman Show, 1960-1971. Museum of Modern Art,
Pai, Tanya. “The Sticky, Sugary History of Peeps.” Vox. Vox, April 11, 2017. https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/11/15209084/peeps-easter.
5
I miss my friend Toto.
21
Artist Statement
I am a twenty-one years old artist and my childhood has not died. It rests in my eyes to grasp the thread that links things together in this intricate world. Performance art is being a child and awakening the world which is designed and ruled by adults. I ask with the simplest passion, desire, and curiosity. I am being authentic while being a child, disregarding the rules and seeking new sensations. I create my reality through my work and mourn for the Momento Mori. I express my sadness for the inevitable yet recurrent farewell. Being a child is never easy and sometimes full of tears because the child truly cares about the world. The child cares about her plushes, her candies, her friends, her teachers, and her family…Everything is unquestionably unique.
In Toto, I present the quest that took three months and will continue for the rest of my life in search of the symbolic Toto (named by me) –the yellow Peeps bunny plush who burst into my life soundlessly in the summer of 2022 sitting on the windowsill of the third-floor common space in Stone Davis. I felt safe when staring at her, who always glows in front of the glittering Lake Waban, and welcoming me into the new space. When she disappeared, my quest to find her was due to a simple desire of missing my friend. The Totochens (little Totos) I found include Kambiz Sharif's bronze sculpture Need (2015) in the Davis Museum's object storage, the shop sign of a fabric shop in Bordeaux, the children's book Totoche by Catharina Valckx in Bordeaux, and Mifuko's wooden ornament in Vienna. Each encounter with a Totochen accompanies a destined farewell to an important person in my life. The inevitable farewell with both Totochens and people in my life adumbrates Toto functions as a Momento Mori.
Peeps were first mass-produced in 1953, a decade prior to the advent of Pop Art. The criticism of mass consumerism propelled by capitalistic propaganda is the sub-text of Toto, which mourns the death of long-lasting connections to individuals and individuality in the contemporary fast food culture. My art invites the audience to create their own symbols to deconstruct and reconstruct their world through the eyes of children and reconcile the Momento Mori.
