谢德庆：一年行为表演1980－1981
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 798 Art District, Beijing
June 28 – August 25, 2013
Hsieh’s One Year Performances are already became part of contemporary art’s history. During the 1980-1981 performance, Hsieh punched a time clock every hour on the hour for one year. It is the tension between even imagining doing something like that by oneself and the fact that most of us do follow exactly the same patterns of control everyday, which lies at the center of this work. Hsieh did something which looks like self-imprisonment, yet he only exemplified the structures of control that the majority of citizens undergo as part of their participation in capitalist society. It exemplifies the question of intensity: what is still bearable, and what is not.
The simplicity of the work lies in it’s face value: It is what it is. It seems so simple and obvious – because we can easily picture the action in our mind. However once we picture it, there is a strange aftertaste of absurdity. Then we either suppress our feelings or we start to bridge the element of absurdity with our everyday experience. What is the meaning of repetitive actions we carry out day by day? Aren’t they simply reassurances that we exist?
Thus, besides hovering between unthinkable absurdity and everyday experience, there is also a oscillation between a positive and negative reaction to the action portrayed. Is it a representation of exploitative capitalist production relations? Or is it a sign referring to our everyday repetitive actions, no matter for what reason we do them, which all serve as simple affirmations that: ‘I am still alive.”?
