“Time Clock Piece” (One Year Performance 1980-81) -Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh, Time Clock Piece (One Year Performance 1980–1981), installation view with time cards, industrial time-clock, projector, photo-strips and film.
Tehching Hsieh’s, Time Clock Piece (One Year Performance 1980-1981) is a durational performance of Hsieh punching time cards into an industrial time-clock everyday on the hour for one year. Hsieh’s performance took place privately in his small New York studio, and was documented with a 16mm film camera, positioned ahead of Hsieh and the industrial time-clock. On every hour when Hsieh punches the time-clock, a single frame is taken on the film, amounting to 24 stills a day and 8760 in a year. The stills were compressed into a 6 minute silent time-lapse film, flashing 24 frames per second, a direct correspondence to the cultural measure of time. The durational aesthetic reveals the relationship between the culturally constructed ‘clock’ time and the ‘duration’ of a lived experience. The measures and passage of time is signified and captured through the time-lapse documentation, transformation of Hsieh’s hair from shaven to long, and the moving hands of the clock. The documentation of Time Clock Piece is indexical to the performance, serving as an apparatus for audiences to imagine the duration of Hsieh’s lived experience and materialising the passage of time. Hsieh’s durational performance examined the inherent human condition of spatial confinement and temporal regulation and constraint.
Tehching Hsieh’s cultural and political identity as an illegal Taiwanese immigrant in New York is often brought to the forefront in discussions of his works. In an interview with Adrian Heathfield in 2009, Hsieh denied any autobiographical intentions in his works and was more broadly focused on revealing the human condition of ‘doing time’. Hsieh extended his philosophical ideas of the experiential nature of time and life, through the repetition of everyday industrial activities and routines. Time Clock Piece can be interpreted as an ontological evocation to Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, reflecting on the absurd predicament of the human condition. Sisyphus the punished hero pushes a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down again day after day, serves as a metaphor for the meaninglessness of the human condition. Similarly, Hsieh’s oeuvre reflects existential sentiment on the futility of existence, “life is a life sentence”, and the endurance of “passing time” in life. Hsieh’s subjection to spatial and temporal constraint unveils the cultural construction and rationalisation of time that dominates within the society, often used as tools of regulation and bio-power upon individuals by hegemonic institutions. However, Hsieh considers the self-perpetuation and subjection as a means of progress and autonomy in a homogeneous environment, indicative of Camus’ existential thought of embracing the futile predicament inherent to the human condition. Spatial limitation is a reoccurring motif throughout Hsieh’s consecutive year-long performances, Cage Piece (1978-1979) and Outdoor Piece (1981-1982) challenges the endurance of the human psychological and physical capacity.
The plethora of forms in documentation and archival mechanisms of Time Clock Piece is a clash between photography, film and performance. The shapeshifting narrative between progression and repetition throughout the work demonstrates the dynamic paradoxes of the human condition. The amalgamation of forms in documentation presents a paradoxical conjuncture between the static and movement, reflecting the lineal and cyclical nature of time. The documentation is produced as a result and in situ of the performance, positioning the viewers to piece together the transience of Hsieh’s performance. The film and punchcards materialises the virtuality of time, enabled by the choreographic practice of punching the time-clock and through the process of photography. With the absence of an active audience, the documentation and material archives are used as signification and evidence to Hsieh’s dematerialised and site-specific performances. However, Hsieh considers the resulting documentation as secondary to his oeuvre, and privileges the act of the moment in time as the artwork. Documentation and material archives are often positioned as a direct correspondence to a moment. However, Hsieh deliberately published corresponding documents twenty years after the performance as a way to disembody the relationship between the work and material archive. The dematerialisation and site-specificity of the work makes it un-exhibitable, and it is only through the material archive and documentation that make it possible to view in retrospect. This invokes further question into how the transience and ephemeral nature of time and moments are often perceived through archival memory and documentation.
Tehching Hsieh’s life practice is an investigation into the human condition, expressed through physical exertions on to the existential conditions of time and space. Although Hsieh decided in 1999 to completely stop making art, his oeuvre continues to ‘pass time’ within the contemporary art world in photographs and material archives.
Heathfield, Adrian, and Hsieh Tehching. Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh. London, Cambridge: Live Art Development Agency, MIT Press, 2009. pp. 13–327.
VernissageTV, “Tehching Hsieh: Doing Time / Taiwan Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale 2017,” May 24, 2017 Documentary/Interview, 8:26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7p3w-v9nlk&t=26s
Wakefield, Nick, ‘Time-specificity of performance’, Choreographic Practices 5: 2, 2014. p. 187, doi: 10.1386/chor.5.2.183_1
