One Year Performance 1980-1981. (Time Clock Piece)

One Year Performance 1980-1981. (Time Clock Piece)

Year: 
2000
Duration: 
6 min 8 sec
Edition: 
2015
Format: 
installation

Tehching Hsieh is an artist who has been mythologized since retiring from making art in 2000. In 1970s and 1980s New York, he made an exceptional series of artworks experimenting with time: five separate one-year-long performances. The exhibition will focus on documentation of his performance ‘life work’, One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece): For one year, the artist punched a worker’s time clock located in his studio, on the hour, every hour. Marking the occasion by taking a self-portrait on a single frame of 16mm film, the resulting reel documents a year in his life at approximately one second per day – a pace that is polar opposite of the enduring length of the original performance. The punch cards, witnessed by a third party for authenticity, and other ephemera, document Hsieh’s life restructured around this highly repetitive task.

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