Artist Lecture - Tehching Hseih

During the last two weeks, I went to Tehching Hseih’s lecture on his art. My first impression of him was that he was an interesting man with funny parts at times and a very unique style to his performance pieces. To me, performance pieces can for the most part be very slow and a bit boring so it’s nice to see a performance artist who actually does pieces that intrigue my eye.

One of the things I absolutely love about this performance artist is the sheer originality of his pieces. Tehching Hseih always seems to have an organized plan with his performance pieces as well as specific rules and a set start and end date. Each piece is unique in itself since the piece always seems to have a comparative situation to it. For example, in 1983, Tehching Hseih and Linda Montano did a one year performance piece together. In the piece, they’d always be together in the same room at the same time, and this would be accomplished as well by an eight foot rope connecting each other. However, the two performance artists would never touch. This sort of gives the feel of an unhappy marriage in my head and how though two people could be bonded to one another, it may not produce a happy ending.

Of course, the year long performance pieces that really blew me away was the Time Clock Performance piece done from 1980-1981 and the Cage Piece from 1978-1979. For the cage piece, Hseih stated that he would be stuck in a cage for an entire year refusing to talk, read, write, watch television, or listen to the radio until he was unsealed. For a person like myself, that kind of year long process would probably drive me a bit insane since I rely on drawing or writing to relieve stress. In his Time Clock piece, Hseih went to a room where he would punch in a card for a time clock every day for a year. That sort of taxing day to day repetitiveness also would be something that drives me a bit unnerved since I do like to do different things every day. I was impressed with how thorough he was in these pieces as he got a friend to bring him food in the cage and maintain it everyday, and he also got witnesses to sign that he punched in the time clock every day. Dedication like that is something people do not see often, and I believe it to be something that draws people to his work.

Overall, Tehching Hseih was a great man to listen to. He has very funny moments but his works also struck a chord with the exact timing. Even the six minute video he showed felt so long in comparison. There’s a meditative charm to his works and I really was glad I went.