Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh
Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh
$49.95
HSIEH. Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh
MIT Press
Cl. 2009
Book ID: 82127
In the vibrant downtown Manhattan art scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Taiwanese-American artist Tehching Hsieh made an exceptional series of artworks. Hsieh realized five separate one-year-long performances that were unprecedented in their use of physical difficulty over extreme durations and in their absolute conception of art and life as simultaneous processes. In the unfolding series of these projects Hsieh moved from a year of solitary confinement without any communication, to a year in which he punched a workerÕs time clock in his studio on the hour every hour, to a year spent living without any shelter on the streets, to a year in which he was tied closely to the artist Linda Montano without ever touching and, lastly, to a year of total abstention from art activities and influences. In 1986 Hsieh announced that he would spend the next thirteen years making art but not showing it publicly. This final lifeworkÑan immense act of self-affirmation and self-erasureÑcame to a close at the turn of the millennium.
384 pp., illus.
