LONG-DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART
Tehching Hsieh, Time Clock Piece, 1980-1981
Inspired by the upcoming visit of the renowned New York based artist, Tehching Hsieh to Australia, tonight on Something Else, Julia and Ira talk about LONG-DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART. Their guest in the studio is a Sydney-based artist Frances Barrett, a founding member of the performance and video collective, Brown Council. As the former Co-Director of Serial Space in 2012, Frances was involved with curating and producing Time Machine, a festival of experimental time-based art.
Frances Barrett is one of many durational performance artists whose work has been inspired by Tehching Hsieh’s pieces which explore questions of time, life and being, and are notable for their conceptual purity and physical extremity. Hsieh began making his one-year long performances in the late 70s and is today internationally recognised as a leading practitioner of durational performance (he has been branded a “master” by fellow artist Marina Abramovic).
One of Hsieh’s early works, the Time Clock Piece (1980-1981), will be showing at the Carriageworks from April 29th to July 6th. In this work, every hour on the hour, twenty four hours a day, for one year, Hsieh punched a time clock. At each punch, a movie camera shot a single frame. When edited together, one day was condensed into one second and one year reduced to around six minutes. The Carriageworks presentation marks the first time a major solo work by Tehching Hsieh will be presented in Australia. The installation comprises the documents the artist produced (photographs, film, time cards, and statements) as he observed the passing of time in this relentlessly methodical manner over a gruelling one year period.
Tune in to 89.7FM tonight and listen to Julia and Ira talk to Frances Barrett about the origin, meaning, and complexities of creating and witnessing long-durational performance art.
To listen online click here
You can catch one of Frances’ performances at the Alaska Projects on August 31st.
For more info on her future work keep an eye on her website
Tehching Hsieh’s first one-year performance (1978) sow him in voluntary confinement, alone in a cage without speaking, reading or writing for twelve months.
In March this year, Frances performed Occupation, a performance of sedation. In this work, Frances imposed her performance on the exhibition space, rupturing the curatorial vision through positing her sedated body amongst the other works of art. Occupation is a performance that explores the notion of occupying, transforming and disrupting space – both physically and psychologically.
In 2013 Frances and her colleague Kate Blackmore performed Box Set, commemorating the end of analogue television in Australia. Box Set was an 8-day endurance performance presented within a live television studio. Frances and Kate watched every episode of one of the world’s longest running television series, The Simpsons, while fasting.