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M+, Hong Kong, © Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh 謝德慶
One Year Performance 1980–1981 一年表演 1980-1981
1980–1981
The entire artistic oeuvre of Tehching Hsieh consists of six performances, which the artist defines as his ‘lifeworks’. Hsieh carried out these performances with extreme rigour, establishing a set of rules and conditions and then adhering to them for an extended period of time—the first five of his performances lasted for one year and the sixth lasted for thirteen years. He adopted the aesthetics of administrative function, often incorporating elements like legal documents to emphasise the constraints he placed on his art and his life.
The second of Hsieh’s influential ‘lifeworks’, One Year Performance 1980–1981 (also known as Time Clock Piece) involved the artist installing a mechanical time clock—a device used by businesses to monitor the working hours of employees—in his studio and punching in a paper card every hour of the day for an entire year. In order to follow his self-imposed rule of marking each hour, Hsieh could never travel far from his studio nor sleep for more than an hour. The performance generates a powerful commentary on the commodification of time and labour and issues of self-surveillance. As opposed to his first year-long project, in which the artist confined his body to a cage, Time Clock Piece enacted strict restrictions on his time. This performance involved no physical constraints, but the regularity of marking time was nevertheless severely limiting. The work exists today as a set of time cards, an announcement poster, photographs, the time clock, and legal documents attesting to Hsieh’s fidelity to the conditions he defined for himself. A 16mm film composed of self-portraits (at one frame per hour) provides a time-lapse portrait of Hsieh—most notably, the artist’s hair grows longer over the course of the project. Aside from questions of individual freedom, the performance’s serial nature and administrative aesthetics suggest the difficulty of recording or representing time itself.
The second of Hsieh’s influential ‘lifeworks’, One Year Performance 1980–1981 (also known as Time Clock Piece) involved the artist installing a mechanical time clock—a device used by businesses to monitor the working hours of employees—in his studio and punching in a paper card every hour of the day for an entire year. In order to follow his self-imposed rule of marking each hour, Hsieh could never travel far from his studio nor sleep for more than an hour. The performance generates a powerful commentary on the commodification of time and labour and issues of self-surveillance. As opposed to his first year-long project, in which the artist confined his body to a cage, Time Clock Piece enacted strict restrictions on his time. This performance involved no physical constraints, but the regularity of marking time was nevertheless severely limiting. The work exists today as a set of time cards, an announcement poster, photographs, the time clock, and legal documents attesting to Hsieh’s fidelity to the conditions he defined for himself. A 16mm film composed of self-portraits (at one frame per hour) provides a time-lapse portrait of Hsieh—most notably, the artist’s hair grows longer over the course of the project. Aside from questions of individual freedom, the performance’s serial nature and administrative aesthetics suggest the difficulty of recording or representing time itself.
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