Tehching Hsieh

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Tehching Hsieh – One Life Performance Performing the Self

When it come to challenging life values, a more compact, clear, genuine, and universal example in the field of performance art cannot be found. The work of Tehching Hsieh is a manifestation of ultimate human freedom, as solid as marble. His art deals with the most powerful elements at play in life, while at the same time touching on the most intimate subjects.

Modern art has become so spread out, shattered and lost in formal dogmatism that nowadays it is present in every moment, in every possible form and idea. Performance art, being the most direct and true expression, stripping away as it does all formal restrictions, theatrical directness while being “here and now” proves, especially at these times, the truth of the most fascinating artistic discourses. The figure of Tehching, standing somewhat aside yet at the same time in the center of public attention, is a prime example of the theory that action art is the most live, direct, and influential (and maybe neglected) of all modern artistic approaches.

Ridding himself of all possible physical attributes while remaining most physical, Tehching Hsieh tries to abstract himself from everything to the very basic existential forms. Such a pure and complete gesture is extremely idiosyncratic, and in the context of Czech art, can only be compared to Karel Miler’s simple Blíže k oblakům (Closer to the Clouds — 1977) and Sledování (Watching —1972), and that only with difficulty. The liberating and purifying nature of Hsieh’s work can also be traced in the action 33 by Richard Fajnor in ROXY in 1999. Yet Tehching’s gestures overstep the private and intimate character of contemporary works. His pieces burst with originality.

Hsieh’s work consists of only a few performances, but they stretch over his entire life. In total, Tehching has managed to produce five one-year performances, and a longer piece. They all have in common publicly announced statements and a thoroughly elaborate set of restrictions and rules. Tehching’s artistic activity began on his arrival to America in 1978.

The limited, yet universal and beautiful works will remain cornerstones of a modern understanding of performance and, perhaps, contemporary art in general.

One-year performance #1: The Cage Piece

Hsieh spent an entire year locked inside a cage that he had constructed in his loft. With no one to talk to, no radio, television, or books, he spent the time only with himself — just being: thinking, counting the days. Each day he documented by making a mark on the wall and taking a photograph of himself. An assistant, with whom he did not exchange words, brought him food, and disposed of waste.

The first piece expresses the artist’s isolation and solitude. How much outside nourishment can we give up and still remain ourselves? Hsieh’s first work is a rich set of questions.

One-year performance #2: Punch Time Clock Piece

In his second piece, Tehching punched a time clock every hour on the hour twenty-four hours a day for an entire year. “To help illustrate the time process,” Hsieh shaved his head before the piece began, and then let his hair grow freely for the duration of the performance. Every time he punched the clock, a movie camera shot a single frame. The resulting time compresses each day into a second, and the whole year into about six minutes.

This work represents a manifestation of the human acceptance of time. It focuses on the nature of time and the human obsession with time. We are fundamentally temporal beings. Yet we rarely pay attention to the passage of time. We tend to think of time in terms of the activities that fill it up. Or we think about time negatively, in terms having to wait. Stripping all the contents and contexts away, Tehching struggles to experience something uniquely pure. He did this by pushing to the extreme the way our society equates time with work. He used a time clock, the device that so mercilessly judges human accomplishment by the measure of time spent. The passage of time itself, devoid of any particular content, became the sole object of his labors. By pushing our society’s reification of time to its ultimate point, Hsieh was able to rediscover an inner experience of time, a sense of pure eventless duration. A universal being.

One year performance #3: Outdoor Piece

In this work, Hsieh stayed outside for a whole year. He did not enter any building or roofed structure. He spent the entire year roaming around New York. He relied on pay phones and chance meetings to keep in touch with his friends. Each day, he recorded his wanderings on a map, noting in particular the places where he ate or slept.

The whole action is very much limited to the basic needs record — eating, sleeping, and defecating. It is almost an inversion of his first action. Hsieh opened himself up, completely, to the outside: he tested his powers of survival in circumstances that were usually beyond his own control. Without a home, one becomes almost invisible, socially uncategorized. He finally became himself, the artist — creator, throwing away all brushes and equipment just to remain alone, the true “self.”


Art / Life One year performance #4: Rope piece

This performance was a collaboration with Linda Montano. The two of them spent a year tied together by an 8-foot rope. At the same time, they both tried to avoid actually touching, so that they could maintain some sense of personal freedom. Hsieh and Montano did not know each other before the piece began. But once it started they were never separated for a period of one year. Each day, they kept records of their time together by taking photos and recording audiotapes. Linda Montano had also been a collaborator with Tom Marioni: before this work they did Handcuff — a performance in which she was handcuffed to Marioni for three days.

The piece with Tehching explores the dimensions of intimacy. How close can (two) people get, and to what extent must they always remain strangers to one another? This piece is not about patience and suffering. On the contrary, it is all about life. As Linda says, she underwent the piece “not to waste a second. That art/life task shall become the task I have given myself until I die. To make every minute count.”

One year performance #5: ----

In his last one-year piece, Hsieh just “went in life.” This last action in fact is a negation of the previous four. Hsieh spent an entire year without art: making art, talking or reading about it, viewing it, or in any other way participating in it. Since there was nothing special during this period of his life, there was nothing to record. How does art differ from ordinary life? The work is an endeavor to make art and life coincide. Life is transfigured, given a special richness and significance, by being turned into a work of art.

In the words of Tehching, performance and life are connected. In Cage, it is about isolation, Outdoors was a struggle with the outside world. Being tied together is a clear idea, because to survive we are all tied up together, he feels. We struggle because everybody wants to feel freedom. Individuals are independent. The piece becomes art and life — and also a year is a symbol of things happening over and over. In other words it is a multiplying of one’s world over and over. Simply put, to break down habitual patterns.