Tehching Hsieh: Bureaucrat of Endurance, Token of Extremes
This essay-letter is a ferocious attack on Tehching Hsieh's institutional canonization, aimed through UCLA's Michael Berry and the broader machinery that turns endurance into sanctified paperwork. Williams argues that Hsieh's famous acts of jumping, confinement, timekeeping, outdoor exposure, and rope-binding were not breakthroughs but belated repetitions of already established performance art, from Yves Klein and Allan Kaprow to Chris Burden, Acconci, and Schneemann. The polemic's most volatile move is to contrast Hsieh's chosen endurance with actual extremity--Albert Woodfox's solitary confinement, Emmy Hennings's foundational labor in Dada, and the abandoned dignity of Chinese painting traditions. The essay is ruthless about institutions that convert identity, immigration, hardship, and notarization into profundity when imagination is absent. Its final charge is devastating: Hsieh leaves not art, but bureaucracy performing the role of avant-garde seriousness.
- DATE:
- December 20, 2022
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Essay / Critique
- PUBLICATION / VENUE:
- UCLA Daily Bruin
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Tehching Hsieh; Michael Berry; Yves Klein; Allan Kaprow; Chris Burden; Vito Acconci; Carolee Schneemann; Jackson Pollock; Guo Xi; Shitao; Ma Yuan; C. C. Wang; James Cahill; Albert Woodfox; Linda Montano; Emmy Hennings; Hugo Ball; Marcel Duchamp
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- UCLA; MIT Press; Metropolitan Museum of Art; UC Berkeley; Laguna Art Museum; Cabaret Voltaire; New York Times
- KEYWORDS:
- endurance as belated repetition; institutional canonization of bureaucracy; Klein and Kaprow prior; notarization as profundity; identity as credential; immigration as art-historical alibi; solitary confinement vs performance confinement; Hsieh leaves bureaucracy not art