Lecture by Tehching Hsieh

Tehching Hsieh talks about the 21 year period between 1978 and 1999 when he practiced as an artist. During this time, he made six epic durational works, five individual One Year Performances, followed by a final work, Thirteen Year Plan.

Approximate duration - 90 minutes

Tehching Hsieh (b.1950, Nan-Chou, Taiwan)
Tehching Hsieh revolutionised performance art in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the impact of his work remains profound. Between 1978 and 1999, he made six epic durational works; five individual One Year Performances were followed by a final work, Thirteen Year Plan, after which he stopped making art. Each of his remarkable One Year Performances - which separately involved living in solitary confinement, depriving himself of sleep, living outdoors, tying himself to another person and doing no art - required extreme focus, discipline, dedication and self-denial. They were, he says, 'about being human, how we explain time, how we measure our existence.' The first One Year Performance ('Cage Piece') was made while he was living as an illegal immigrant in New York City, and arose from the isolation that he experienced during this time. Explaining that though his works relate to his life experience they are not autobiographical, Hsieh includes among his influences Dostoevsky, Kafka, Nietzsche, Camus's Myth of Sisyphus, and his mother.