One Year Performance 1978–1979 by Tehching Hsieh

‘One Year Performance 1978-1979’ is the first book to focus solely on ‘Cage Piece’ and presents each of the daily portraits on a full page in chronological order.

On 30 September 1978, Tehching Hsieh began the first in a series of extraordinary One Year Performances that would make him a regular name in the New York art scene. He sealed himself in a purpose-built cage in his studio and remained there in solitary confinement without any communication for 365 days. His friend, Cheng Wei Kuong, helped facilitate the work by taking care of his food, clothing and refuse, and by taking the daily portraits which make up this book.

This work, ‘One Year Performance 1978-1979’ (‘Cage Piece’), was unprecedented in its use of physical difficulty over extreme durations. As well as being in solitary confinement, Hsieh’s self-imposed list of rules forbade him from reading, writing, listening to the radio or watching television. The artist opened his studio to a public audience on 19 days out of 365, but even on these days he remained unresponsive and avoided eye contact. The strict rules of the work piled deprivation on deprivation, consigning him to a life of unadulterated and unarticulated thought.

“Thinking was the focus of this piece and was also my way of survival. It didn’t matter what I was thinking about, but I had to continue thinking, otherwise I would lose control not only of myself but also of the ability to handle the whole situation. It was difficult to pass time. I scratched 365 marks on the wall, one for each day. I had to calculate time; it helped me to know how many days I had to go.” — Tehching Hsieh

For his One Year Performances, Hsieh worked outside the art world’s sanctioned spaces and used methods borrowed from a legal framework. For ‘Cage Piece’, each joint of the cage was sealed by attorney Robert Projansky, who also provided a witness statement at the end of the year attesting that Hsieh had remained in the locked cage for the full duration. Daily portraits taken by his friend Cheng Wei Kuong provide further evidence of his presence in front of the camera each day. Hsieh shaved his head at the start of the performance and allowed his hair to grow out naturally, so the daily portraits also reveal the passing of time.

One Year Performance 1978-1979 is the first book to focus solely on ‘Cage Piece’ and presents each of the daily portraits on a full page in chronological order.