What is the use of Hsieh’s performance art to society?

The medium of Hsieh’s artistic communication is not words, sounds or paints, but his own life. His creations include five "one-year performances" from 1978 to 1986, and the 13-year performance art "Earth" from the end of 1986 to the end of 1999. Every act involves a special statement, a special constraint, a special way of being. They are carefully documented in a way that is relevant to the content. Although Xie never elaborates on his genesis, each work implicitly raises profound questions about life, art, existence, and what it means to live in the world we live in. For the first year of what was informally called Cage Piece, Hsieh locked himself in a cage he built in his attic for an entire year, almost like living in a prison. He had no one to talk to, no way to read or listen, and nothing to do except think and count the days (right). Every day, he marked the wall and took photos of himself to record the ordeal. An assistant brought him food and took out the trash, but they never spoke.

The first year act was about loneliness and isolation. It raises questions about the inherent boundaries of identity and existence. Hsieh faced the bottom line of survival: not much food, shelter and clothing, lack of social contact, material enjoyment and entertainment opportunities. We rely on communication with others and nourishment and stimulation from the outside world to sustain life. How much can a person give up and still survive? What does it mean to reduce to the lowest possible scope? What does it mean to think without opportunities for communication and recording of reflections? As an illegal immigrant (at the time), Hsieh's experience as a foreigner in New York may have inspired his performance art. This work certainly resonates with the situation of political prisoners imprisoned around the world. But Hsieh's willingness to accept such dire circumstances leaves people with a sense of mystery and uneasiness.

The art of the second year is called Time Piece. Xie Deqing inserted the work time card into the clock and marked the time. Hour after hour, twenty-four hours a day, day after day, for a whole year. An observer confirmed the time cards for each day. "To show the progression of time," Hsieh had his hair cut before the start of this work and then let his hair grow naturally during that time. Every time he clocked in at the clock (pictured left), the camera captured one frame. Finally, the film compresses each day into one second, which makes a year approximately six minutes.

The second act focuses on the nature of time. In essence, we are all a drop in the ocean. However, we rarely pay attention to the passage of time itself. We tend to think of time in terms of activities that fill it, or passively when we have to wait or want something immediately. In his actions, Hsieh discards all content and circumstances in order to experience processes such as the pure passage of time. He accomplishes his work by taking our society's habit of equating time with work to an extreme. Hsieh used a time clock, a device used in the workplace that mechanically divides time into precise equal parts and coldly judges human performance by measuring time consumption. Hsieh regards clocking in as his job, rather than using a clock (time) to measure various types of work. In the process, the very process of the passage of time, which excludes any special content, becomes the sole purpose of his labor. By pushing the materialization of time in our lives to the extreme, Hsieh rediscovers an inner experience of time, a sense of pure, tranquil "duration"

In the third tentative title During the one-year performance of "Outdoor Piece", Hsieh lived outdoors for a whole year. During the year, he never entered any building or roofed structure. For much of the year, he wandered aimlessly through Lower Manhattan (below), relying on payphones to occasionally check in with friends. Every day, he recorded on a map the places he had traveled and marked where he ate and slept.

The third act is considered the opposite of the first act. Since he is not confined indoors, Hsieh opens up outdoor space for himself as much as possible. The self can wither from exposure and die from closure. In this work, Hsieh throws himself into a state of drifting and becomes a vagabond. He tests his strength to survive the environment. These circumstances are usually beyond his control.

What is the essence of housing? Whether symbolic or material, why are human needs so basic? How does a person's home play a role in determining his or her identity? What would happen if a person were forced to live without these basic things? Once homeless, a person becomes anonymous and unknown. Do homeless people like this also have a sense of freedom in addition to a sense of deprivation? There are many homeless people living on the streets in New York, and what does it mean for Hsieh to consciously share their plight?

Hsieh’s fourth annual performance, subtitled Art/Life, is a collaboration with Linda Montano. The two of them were connected together with a rope about 2.43 meters long for a year (picture below). At the same time, they try to avoid actual contact so that each can retain their own sense of space. Hsieh and Montano did not know each other before the work began. But in the year since the work began, they have never been apart. Each day they documented their time together through photographs and audiotapes.

Fourth Year Art asks us to think about how human relationships work. The first and third year behaviors show the self in isolation from or in opposition to the world. This piece explores the boundaries of intimacy, what makes two independent people a couple? How do they face another person and the world around them? What does it mean to them to stay so close for so long? How do we negotiate our needs for this contact (here represented by them being tethered) and privacy (here represented by their lack of physical contact)? Where does self end and other begin? How close can two people stay in contact, and to what extent can they maintain a sense of strangeness to both parties?

Hsieh’s fifth and final one-year performance is, in a sense, a negation of the previous four performance arts. He spent an entire year away from art - not making art, not talking about art, not reading or looking at art, or participating in art in any other way under any circumstances. To be more precise, Hsieh was "just living" that year. Unlike other annual acts, there are very few written records of this year. Since he didn't do anything special, there was nothing to record.

The fifth act is still important because it puts the previous acts into perspective. How do experiences and experiences change when they are named art? How to distinguish art from daily life? All of Hsieh's creations revolve around these issues. In a sense, creation is an effort to harmonize art and life. But does this mean that after being transformed into artistic creation, life is beautified and given a special richness and meaning? Or, after being absorbed into the texture and rhythm of daily life, has art lost its sense of mystery and been relegated to the world? There are other unexpected and accidental problems that arise that make perfection in life or creation doubly impossible. Things never work out as planned. So, in the second act, Hsieh missed several punches because he overslept; in the third, he was arrested for getting into a fight and forced indoors for several hours. In the fourth act, he and Montano accidentally come into contact several times. By highlighting the subtle flaws of these arts (which are also works of art in their own right), and by creating an art that "just lives", Hsieh is able to reflect on these dilemmas.

"Earth" was Hsieh's final plan and lasted the longest, from his 36th birthday to his 49th birthday. It is recorded, unlike the fifth act; but unlike the first four, its recording only occurs in retrospect. When Hsieh announced this work, he said he would make art, but only in secret. He did not reveal its content or intent until the act was over. Only then did He make the statement: "I am alive." He said it and continued it into the millennium.

"Earthly" does not require the realization of specific conditions like the first four actions, nor does it negate specific conditions like the fifth one-year action. Rather, simple existence - survival, perseverance, continuation - becomes the goal that the artist wants to confirm. This creation does nothing but unconsciously repeat what has already happened in Hsieh's daily existence. In this way, Hsieh once again reset the relationship between art and life.

"Earth" suggests another way of looking back at Hsieh's past creations. But no matter how extraordinary the work that Hsieh sets out to do, the most important thing about every one of his works is this: through their repetition and integration into the everyday, they become as ordinary as anything else. Perhaps this is the most important shift of all.

Hsieh Deqing’s creations bring us into endless meditation. It raises difficult questions without providing any answers. Hsieh's actions did not illustrate any theory, nor did he elucidate any definite concepts. Instead, they use themselves as examples and concretize the questions they raise. Whether Hsieh is concerned with loneliness and isolation, the boundaries of the self and its relationship to others, or the way our lives are embedded in time and space, he always seeks to capture these issues as concretely as possible. He not only thinks about these fundamental dilemmas, but also experiences them in the density, joy, and terror of their very existence. Doing so requires incredible restraint and dedication. But it also requires an extraordinary kind of conscious will: a complete dedication of oneself to time, chance and material things. Tenaciously insist on transcending reality and refuse to be limited by a bunch of ideas about reality that we already have. This is the essence of Hsieh’s art.

Each of Hsieh’s actions is a separate event: an action or a series of actions that unfold in a specific space and within a specific period of time. Now that these actions have been completed, they cannot be repeated or repeated. All that remains are traces and relics. These traces exist in several forms: there are all the ideas arising from Hsieh's work, such as those expressed in this essay; there are rigorous records of these actions, including posters, photographs, videos and statements by the artist, all of which Saved on a DVD-ROM. This large-scale evidence is extremely important, because without witness, Hsieh's creation is incomplete. Of course, no one can know the inner experience of the artist; all he can reach is to accept it. When he performed six works, there was a huge gap between the artist and the audience, but one was necessary for the other. But for these actions to be visible to the world, they cannot remain completely hidden. They have to be introspective and face the outside world at the same time. In addition to performing, they also need to be witnessed. Like a tree falling in the forest: someone has to hear the crash. Hsieh has presented his artistic talent to us, the witness of his art. We, as witnesses, make that art possible by accepting it. There is a huge gap between the artist and the audience when they face each other, but one is necessary for the other.

In the past, an artist was a person who combined his artist's eye or musician's ear with his genius skills to create wonderful works that provided us with audio-visual entertainment and shocked us. mind.

In the 20th century, modern art has undergone earth-shaking changes. The biggest change is the emergence of conceptual art and performance art. Many artists no longer use paintbrushes and paper canvases to create, but Use your own body, life and even life to create. The boundaries between art and philosophy, art and life, image thinking and conceptual thinking have become blurred, and the boundaries between soul and body have been demolished. A series of art philosophy issues have been placed in front of art historians, aestheticians and even philosophers. Traditional theories In the face of new artistic phenomena, he fell into an embarrassing situation of being helpless.

Hsieh Deqing is the "world boxing champion" in the field of conceptual art. His performance art creations are things we cannot do and cannot be done by us. It is truly a miracle that Hsieh did not suffer a mental breakdown and could still live like a normal person after completing his series of actions.

Hsieh Deqing and his artistic creations have attracted widespread attention from contemporary psychology and behavioral medicine, and have become an unavoidable obstacle to contemporary art research and philosophical research

In 1996, Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House published <>" (probably the name, small 16k black and white with color pictures), Hsieh Deqing was introduced. At that time, he introduced three behaviors of one year, one year in a cage, one year Check in every hour within a year and not enter any building within a year.

I heard that he got married in Sichuan, China last year. He said that his last work was: Use the remaining time to never Don’t do performance art!

It is painful to suppress the desire to create, but with a happy family with a wife and children, this suppression seems to be worth it.