Tehching Hsieh
‘One Year Performance
1978–1979’
by Tehching Hsieh, published by Void.
“While I was doing ‘Cage Piece’, one day an old lady came to my studio, looked around, then came close to my cage. She held the bars of the cage and asked me, “Where is the work?” I gave no response of course.”
Tehching Hsieh
One Year Performance 1978–1979
On 30 September 1978, Tehching Hsieh began the first in a series of extraordinary One Year Performances that would make him a regular name in the New York art scene. He sealed himself in a purpose-built cage in his studio and remained there in solitary confinement without any communication for 365 days. His friend, Cheng Wei Kuong, helped facilitate the work by taking care of his food, clothing and refuse, and by taking the daily portraits which make up this book.
This work, ‘One Year Performance 1978-1979’ (‘Cage Piece’), was unprecedented in its use of physical difficulty over extreme durations. As well as being in solitary confinement, Hsieh’s self-imposed list of rules forbade him from reading, writing, listening to the radio or watching television. The artist opened his studio to a public audience on 19 days out of 365, but even on these days he remained unresponsive and avoided eye contact. The strict rules of the work piled deprivation on deprivation, consigning him to a life of unadulterated and unarticulated thought.
“Thinking was the focus of this piece and was also my way of survival. It didn’t matter what I was thinking about, but I had to continue thinking, otherwise I would lose control not only of myself but also of the ability to handle the whole situation. It was difficult to pass time. I scratched 365 marks on the wall, one for each day. I had to calculate time; it helped me to know how many days I had to go.”
Tehching Hsieh
For his One Year Performances, Hsieh worked outside the art world’s sanctioned spaces and used methods borrowed from a legal framework. For ‘Cage Piece’, each joint of the cage was sealed by attorney Robert Projansky, who also provided a witness statement at the end of the year attesting that Hsieh had remained in the locked cage for the full duration. Daily portraits taken by his friend Cheng Wei Kuong provide further evidence of his presence in front of the camera each day. Hsieh shaved his head at the start of the performance and allowed his hair to grow out naturally, so the daily portraits also reveal the passing of time.
‘One Year Performance 1978-1979’ is the first book to focus solely on ‘Cage Piece’ and presents each of the daily portraits on a full page in chronological order.
17,3 x 23,6 cm
736 pages
750 copies
Hardcover with inserted artist statement
ISBN 978-618-5479-41-1
One Year Performance 1978–1979
Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh was born in 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan. He trained as a seaman which he used as a means to enter the US in 1974, where he was an undocumented worker for 14 years until being granted amnesty and citizenship. From the late 1970s, Hsieh made a series of five extraordinary One Year Performances using long durations, severe conceptual constraints and simple documentary mechanisms to make life and art simultaneous. Hsieh has exhibited his work at major museums, festivals and biennales globally and has now entered the collections of Tate Modern, M+ Hong Kong and Dia Art Foundation.
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GREECE, Void
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Photograph: Cheng Wei Kuong
Text: Tehching Hsieh
Design, Concept: João Linneu, Myrto Steirou
Printing: Jelgavas tipogrāfija
Binding: Jelgavas tipogrāfija
Language: English
Font: ITC Cheltenham by Tony Stan
Tehching Hsieh © for the photographs
Tehching Hsieh © for the text
Void © for this edition