Artist Talk: Teching Hsieh

Teching Hsieh

            Teching Hsieh is a performance artist known for his one-year works that take an extreme amount of dedication and perseverance to complete.  During his artist talk he mentioned, “One year is just a small dent compared to the whole lifetime.”  This quote by him essentially becomes the justification for his works as a whole. 

            For starters, his work, “Cage”, was the most intriguing piece that has been completed by him in my opinion.  During the duration of his talk, I could not imagine having to sit in a cage for an entire year deliberately without being an actual prisoner.  This makes me wonder whether or not he is consciously “othering” him from actual prisoners which is another reason why this piece stood out to me the most.  He had little to no human contact for the duration of this piece, and he scratched a tally mark for every single day that passed until he reached one year. 

            The second piece that stood out to me was his “Outdoor Piece”.  Going back to the statement made earlier, I am still wondering whether or not he intended to other himself from homeless people.  He deliberately lived outdoors in the city for an entire year without stepping inside once.  During his talk he mentioned that he did not trust or the homeless people that he encountered and thus never tried to associate with them.  I found this ironic considering his was actually homeless, on his very own accord for the sake of art, and had no intentions of having any sort of relations with any actual homeless people.