Tehching Hsieh in 1978 and ’79. Mr. Hsieh, a Taiwanese performance artist, arrived in Manhattan in 1974.
As an illegal immigrant, he felt alien, alienated and creatively barren until it came to him: He could turn his isolation into art.
Inside an unfinished loft, he built himself a beautiful cage, shaved his head, stenciled his name onto a uniform and locked himself away for a year.
As an illegal immigrant, he felt alien, alienated and creatively barren until it came to him: He could turn his isolation into art.
Inside an unfinished loft, he built himself a beautiful cage, shaved his head, stenciled his name onto a uniform and locked himself away for a year.
Photo: Cheng Wei Kuong
Thirty years later Mr. Hsieh’s “Cage Piece” is on display at the Museum of Modern Art as the inaugural installation in a series on performance art.
Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
“Art/Life” with Linda Montano, 1983-4. For decades he was almost an urban legend, his harrowing performances — the year he punched a time clock hourly, the year he lived on the streets, the year he spent tethered by a rope to a female artist — kept alive by talk. “Tehching was a bit like a myth,” said Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator of MoMA’s department of media.
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
In a test of his own endurance, Hsieh spent a year on the streets of Manhattan in 1981. Until he received amnesty in 1988, his immigration status, or lack of status, had informed his art, but it also made him an outsider, enduringly. His work was rarely collected, displayed or studied, and he eventually quit making art entirely.
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
For “Cage Piece” in 1978, Hsieh constructed a cell inside a loft in TriBeCa and issued a terse manifesto on white paper: “I shall NOT converse, read, write, listen to the radio or watch television until I unseal myself on September 29, 1979.”
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
Each day Mr. Hsieh scratched a line in the wall with his fingernail, and, with his hair growing infinitesimally longer, he stood on his traced footprints to be photographed.
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
He allowed spectators, but he did not acknowledge them. He was too busy thinking — about his past, his art, the passing of time and the boundaries of space. He was thinking about how his physical confinement liberated his mind.
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
In another grueling performance, he essentially denied himself sleep in order to punch a time clock hourly. To do so he needed multiple alarm clocks attached to amplifiers to penetrate his befogged brain.
That year Mr. Hsieh felt like Sisyphus, he said, engaged in a futile task that nonetheless gave his life purpose and structure. To this day, he said, “wasting time is my concept of life,” clarifying: “Living is nothing but consuming time until you die.”
That year Mr. Hsieh felt like Sisyphus, he said, engaged in a futile task that nonetheless gave his life purpose and structure. To this day, he said, “wasting time is my concept of life,” clarifying: “Living is nothing but consuming time until you die.”
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
His sixth and final piece, a “13-years plan” to make art but not show it publicly, ended with this statement. This winter, owing to renewed interest in performance art, new passion for contemporary Chinese art and the coinciding interests of several curators, Mr. Hsieh’s moment of recognition has arrived from many directions at once.
Photo: Tehching Hsieh
The one-man show at MoMA runs through May 18. The Guggenheim is featuring his time-clock piece in a group show through April 19. M.I.T. Press is about to release “Out of Now,” a large-format book devoted to his “lifeworks.”
“Because of this book I can die tomorrow,” said Mr. Hsieh, who judges the book to be the definitive ode to his artistic career.
“Because of this book I can die tomorrow,” said Mr. Hsieh, who judges the book to be the definitive ode to his artistic career.
Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
@VIA: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/03/01/arts/20090301_HSIEH_SLIDESHOW_index.html
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