Tehching Hsieh in Conversation

Film

Born in 1950 in Nanzhou, Pingtung, Taiwan, Hsieh became known internationally in the late 1970s and early 1980s primarily for his durational performances, each of which ran over a year. The film and photo installation at the Neue Nationalgalerie shows the performance, in which the artist photographed himself punching in on a time clock every hour for a year. The sleep deprivation thus caused provoked a kind of delirium, causing a number of photographs to fail. 

At the end of the performance, Hsieh put together a film out of the individual images, which was exhibited in 2009 at MoMA in New York. Hsieh’s work was featured in the Taiwanese Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and he has had solo exhibitions at the Modern Museet in Stockholm (2016) and the Tate Modern in London (2017–18) as well as the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009).

Video: near future