Tehching Hsieh Turned Every Second Into Art

At Dia, the cage has been reconstructed successful full, implicit with Hsieh’s boots and his tally marks gouged into the wall. Every day, Hsieh was photographed by his friend, and the photos, which are wrapped astir the gallery, amusement his facial look fixed from week to week, period to month—relaxed and blank. The lone constituent that truly changes is his hair, which becomes its ain benignant of clock, each strand a instrumentality for measuring the earth’s rotation successful inches. If you basal successful beforehand of the cage, look astatine it for a agelong time, and truly effort to go there—to ideate the acreage of your beingness shrinking down to this slab of concrete, this cot, and the contents of your mind, and not for a time oregon a period but for a afloat Gregorian year—I deliberation astir of america deed a wall. It’s hard capable to ideate the torture of solitary confinement astatine the hands of the state. It’s intolerable to ideate choosing that punishment voluntarily. Forest monks, anchorites, and hermits person made akin sacrifices successful the sanction of God. Hsieh did truthful successful the sanction of art.

Was Hsieh’s self-imprisonment a connection connected wide incarceration oregon situation reform? No, or, astatine least, not according to him. Hsieh said that helium conscionable wanted to deliberation freely, to acquisition the travel of time; helium wasn’t funny successful chasing spiritual transport oregon governmental meaning. His beingness tells a much analyzable story, though. Hsieh was calved successful Taiwan successful 1950, a twelvemonth aft the Kuomintang, until precocious China’s ruling party, fled Mao Zedong and the mainland, and acceptable up store successful Taipei. Hsieh, erstwhile asked astir his youth, has glossed the ambiance arsenic “conservative” and “oppressive,” avoiding particulars. In fact, helium grew up during the alleged White Terror, erstwhile Taiwan was nether martial instrumentality and citizens could beryllium arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for doing thing adjacent vaguely seditious. (Thousands were besides summarily executed.) It was not an perfect situation for idiosyncratic similar Hsieh, who dropped retired of precocious school, listened to stone and roll, grew his hairsbreadth long, and drank down existentialism by the gallon. His heroes were Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Kafka: outsiders, symptom artists, and intelligence misfits.

Hsieh started coating erstwhile helium was eighteen, and cycled done a fewer splatter-type and minimalist gestures, but thing stuck. By the property of twenty-three, he’d done 3 years of compulsory subject service, abandoned painting, and attached himself to thing called Conceptual Art. He didn’t cognize what it meant, but helium liked the thought of it. He bought a Super 8 camera and attempted a bid of actions. In “Jump Piece” (1973), helium leapt from a second-floor model onto a slab of factual and broke some of his ankles. In different work, helium submerged himself successful a instrumentality of equine shit; successful yet another, helium ate fried atom and effect salad, and threw it up. In retrospect, helium describes each of this arsenic “bad art.”

The existent enactment began with the one-year performances, aft helium took a occupation connected an lipid tanker, jumped vessel adjacent Philadelphia, and arrived successful New York, successful 1974. Following “Cage Piece,” Hsieh produced “Time Clock Piece” (1980-81), successful which helium punched a clip timepiece successful his workplace each hr connected the hr for a year. According to Marina Abramović, who calls Hsieh “the master,” this was his astir hard performance. The portion required the full radius of Hsieh’s beingness to beryllium constrained by the clock. He could ne'er slumber for much than an hour, oregon spell anyplace an hr circular travel beyond its reach. Next were “Outdoor Piece” and “Rope Piece.” For the former, Hsieh pledged not to spell indoors: to participate nary building, subway, train, car, airplane, ship, cave, oregon structure from 1981 to 1982. He roamed the streets of New York City, mostly little Manhattan, and recorded connected maps wherever helium walked, ate, defecated, and slept. The accumulation features his maps and sullied backpack, toothbrush, barroom of soap, and endurance goods, on with photos of him sleeping connected parkland benches, crouching connected the banks of the Hudson successful beforehand of crystal floes, and haunting the city. In “Rope Piece” (1983-84), helium and the creator Linda Montano tied themselves unneurotic with an eight-foot rope. They worked successful a gallery, slept successful adjacent beds, and utilized a bath with nary door, inventing an wholly caller benignant of interpersonal torture. It often didn’t spell well.