working against the clock

"One Year Performance 1980–1981 (known as Time Clock Piece)"
Tenching Hsieh
1980-1981
Bitch, Please was in town this weekend and oh what a joy to see a face from home. The last time I visited her , it was nothing but a weekend of binge eating, drinking, and shopping. We're a little older now and we're in a recession, so only one Diane Von Furstenberg shirt dress for Bitch, Please and one Marc Jacobs plaid tie for me. It wasn't a total weekend of frivolity. On Saturday we went to the Guggenheim and Sunday we took in the MoMA. Unfortunately we missed having our psychological state potentially altered at the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition in the Guggenheim (damn closing times!), but we were introduced to Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh, whose work was featured at both museums. His work is somewhere in between a stunt, a fascinating document of the man made social construct that is time and a dialogue about where art and life begin and end, his performance pieces vexed me, amused me, but most of all intrigued me. The set-up is always as basic and straight forward as its title. In 1978-1979, he locked himself in a cage for a year. In 1980-1981, he punched a time clock every hour of every day for a year. In 1981-1982, he spent the entire year outside, never going in doors (that has be nearly impossible with the temperamental weather in this city). And the true test of endurance came in 1983-1984, when he was attached by rope to artist Linda Montano, but couldn't and didn't touch her. Requiring the monastic concentration of the most Zen monks, Hsiesh goes beyond the edge for his art and I liked what I saw.