Exhibit 2: Tehching Hsieh: One Year Performance 1980-1981

       Tehching Hsieh’s art communication media is his own life rather than text, sound, and paint. Each his performance include a specific statement, a specific constraint, and a specific way of being. They are recorded with gravity in the form of relevant content. Although Hsieh never states the creation reason in detail, every work implicitly put forward some profound problems about life, art, existence, and the meaning of life in the world that we live in. One of his one-year performances Time Clock Piece was created in 1980-1981; Hsieh put the working time card insert the time clock to record the time and punched a time clock every hour in a day. The performance lasted for a whole year and an observer confirmed his every day’s time card. Hsieh used a 16mm movie camera to document himself at the time clock. He got a haircut before started the performance and then let his hair naturally grow during that time to show the progress of time. Hsieh explains that people consume time until they die because life is sentence, passing time, and free thinking. The time is always very different and changing. His intention is the basically passing time rather than the pass time concept. The work breaks the boundaries between daily life and the art gallery system.

       The Time Clock Piece focuses on the nature of time. Essentially, people are a drop in the ocean; however, we rarely pay attention to the passing of time. We tend to consider time according to the activity of filling time or passively think about time when we want to get something immediately. Hsieh abandoned all of the content and circumstances in his performance in order to experience the process such as the pure passage of time. The work finished through push habit about the time is equal to work to excel in our society. He used the time clock to divide the time into accurate equal parts through the measurement of time consumption to assess person's performance ruthlessly. He treated punch clock as his work rather than measured various types of work by time. Eliminated the process of any special content time passing become the only goal of his work. Hsieh re-explained a kind of inner experience of time, a pure, peaceful, and continuous feeling. I think Hsieh explores all kinds of the existing situation of human beings with extreme experience of life. His work has the striking representation form, which causes philosophical consideration for people’s own existence.