I loved Tenching Hsieh's work at FACT entitled 'One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece)'. What Hsieh had done was for a year, he clocked in every hour and took a photo of himself every hour, and did this constantly for a year. When going around the exhibition you follow the journey of him, even though every photo is the same setting and has been taken every hour with the same expression, knowing that he did it for a year seems gruelling just to look at the photos themselves, and how we can see change in his appearance we walk around to each photo. Also the show reel of each photo allows us to see a sped up version of each photo created into a film.
I found this piece intriguing because it delivers more so the question of why did he do it?
When looking into his work more so, it seems to be around the idea of how the illusion of each photo is of working in a factory of some sort and clocking in every day was actually in his studio and how his he has done this piece every hour for a year because the art work is his life. So in portraying it as a factory working photo he personifies and questions what is important in peoples lives.
Tehching Hsieh - One Year Performance 1980 – 1981 (Time Clock Piece) from FACT on Vimeo.
Taken from: http://vimeo.com/16280427
