Tehching Hsieh

    I chose to research the performance artist Tehching Hsieh; I became attracted to his work when I took Thrasher's 2000 class when we looked at his piece with Linda Montano. After researching his pieces I appreciated his work even more because of how much thought went into each one. His pieces aren't just about discipline and focus; when looked at as a whole, his six performance pieces are an evolution and progression of time. His idea is that time becomes the main thing; how he passes his time isn't his main concern. It doesn't matter what he does, he simply passes time.
    In an interview Hsieh was once explained that the sense of loneliness and difficulty of survival that many of his viewers take from his pieces is only part of his work. He explained that we don't really look at survival that closely. "We pretend to smile. We are taught to say that everything is OK, we are in control, even if we are not. There is a need to be positive in public. But art is not doing that. We try to tell the truth in some way to touch part of it, to not be so typical." His kind of work is not about suffering; it is about existence. After reading this quote, I had one of those "YES" moments inside of my brain.
   I often feel isolated, and so I decided to up that feeling by not talking for 24 hours. It was a simple idea, yes, but even for a quiet person such as myself it became more of a challenge than I had expected. In Hsieh's "Cage" piece, he also did not talk, but with his piece he didn't communicate in any way. Since I had work, I had to be able to communicate somehow with the people I work with, so I chose to write down anything I had to say on notecards. While at first I thought that it would take away from the isolation of my piece, I soon found out that it may have emphasized it. In many cases at work I did have to write things down, yes, but there were also numerous instances when I chose not to because I felt that it wasn't important enough. By not talking I also became more isolated because for those who simply said a hello while walking by and didn't get to read my notecard explaining my project, many of them became sort of angry at me or thought that I was mad at them. Others talked really loud at me, perhaps thinking that because I couldn't talk I couldn't understand, pushing me farther from my normal self. My piece made me question how involved I am with my life. After a while it became pretty easy to not talk, to take a step back and listen.. to simply exist. It made me question how I would be if I got the chance to fully replicate Hsieh's piece and fully isolate myself for a year, and also made me appreciate his work even more.

Tehching Hsieh

I am researching Tehching Hsieh. When I took Thrasher’s 2000 class I learned about Hsieh’s work, particularly his piece with Linda Montano. For one year the two artists were tied together by an eight-foot rope. They weren’t allowed to touch each other throughout the duration of the piece. The artist statement they both provided before and after was amazing, because it really showed how much the two grew together over the course of the year. At first they had fights; they didn’t always get along. But in the end, both had an enormous amount of respect and admiration for the other. Hsieh even made the statement that even after the rope comes off, they will still always have an emotional connection, an invisible rope, binding their lives together. This really attracted me to Hsieh’s work because while outsiders might see his pieces as a sort of punishment or quest to torture himself, but I believe there are deeper meanings behind each piece. Since the timeline for each of his pieces is so long, his meaning and purpose for doing the piece grows over the course of the year and allows him to really develop his idea, even if it is just through simple actions like punching a time clock or being in a cage. Since my timeline to complete my piece is much shorter than Hsieh’s I find myself at a standstill. Many of Hsieh’s pieces put him in harsh conditions, such as the cage, living outside, or being tied next to another person. My idea for a piece would take longer than the time period given to see any real progress. I originally thought about limiting what I eat each day to one can of chick peas and drinking only water, monitoring my weight, but I don’t think I would have enough time to see results. Because of work I can’t do a piece that would require me to be in a cage or outside for 24 hours.