Art as penance
Scott Robertson

There are those in the world who do wrong and are punished by those who adhere to the laws created. The laws created vary from place to place, one country to the next. With those laws created come the punishments for breaking them. For the majority of the world the ultimate punishment for breaking those laws created takes form in the shape of a cell. A prison cell. A cage created to hold, for varying degrees of time, those guilty of breaking the laws created. No prisoner ever gets the luxury of deciding how long he or she will spend in the cell.

There are also those who simply feel they have done wrong; not a wrong that breaks one of the laws created, but a wrong that has more to do with personality, location and the rules of any given faith.  Those who simply feel they have done wrong can also be compelled to feel they have done wrong, not by a police enforcing those laws created but by those interested in morality, people with strong beliefs in a specific way of living, adherents to a strict moral code perhaps rather than to the non-flexible law. People who are made to feel they have done wrong may then take to punishing themselves as an act of repentance. Location, faith or personality will determine how and what this act of penance will be.
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Every year, on the last Sunday of July known as Reek Sunday, thousands of Catholics walk up Mt Croagh Patrick in Ireland. Most are on a pilgrimage, visiting this sacred sight as a showing of dedication and commitment to their faith . There are also many who walk and climb as an act of penance. Those who feel in a stronger way the need for redemption walk the mountain barefoot on a bloody and pain-ridden journey that proves their dedication to the faith each step of the long climb up. Through gritted teeth and painful hours they stumble and climb their way up Croagh Patrick, each on a different journey within.

On 30 September 1978 the artist Tehching Hsieh wrote a statement:

‘STATEMENT

I, Sam Hsieh, plan to do a one year performance piece, to begin on September 30, 1978.

I shall seal myself in my studio, in solitary confinement inside a cell-room measuring 11’6 x 9’ x 8’.

I shall NOT converse, read, write, listen to the radio or watch television, until I unseal myself on September 29, 1979.

I shall have food every day.

My friend, Cheng Wei Kuong, will facilitate this piece by taking charge of my food, clothing and refuse.’

To give it its full title, ‘One Year Performance 1978-1979’ or, as it is commonly known, ‘Cage Piece’, was to be the first of five one-year performances that Hsieh would embark on. Each of these was to involve incredible physical and mental strength.

Tehching Hsieh is an artist of Taiwanese origin but who produced these most significant and remembered works while living as an illegal immigrant in New York in the late seventies and early eighties.  It is interesting to note that in the statements for the first two of these epic performances he signed his name as Sam Hsieh. An attempt to blend into America perhaps, to advance in his westernisation?

 In 1978, before entering the cage, Hsieh had made a U.S. Immigration wanted poster  that included his personal details and fingerprints and which stated that he was wanted for ‘Illegal Entry, without visa’. Hsieh confirms himself as the criminal by producing his own wanted poster and exposing the vulnerable situation which he and others were in. This is a brutally honest work that could easily have been lost because of its fragility. Hsieh simply tells it like it is.

The most simplistic visual representation of crime punishment would be imprisonment. Every nation, every race and every religion punish criminal activity with imprisonment. So what can be taken from someone who imprisons oneself?

‘Cage Piece’ at first appears to be a voluntary imprisonment, the  difference being that normal prisoners get the luxury of talking, of reading, occasionally of radio or television. The prison system in this country provides inmates with jobs, remunerating them with small benefits. It allows prisoners to set foot outdoors and exercise, stand below the sky and breathe in fresh air, even if surrounded by high fences and patrolling guards. Hsieh’s prison had none of that. He removed all stimuli from life and concentrated on the internal, on the thought process. ‘One day after work, I was walking back and forth doing my thinking in the studio. Suddenly, I thought why don’t I make the process of thinking about art in my studio an artwork, and present it using long duration?’(1) ‘I was in a position of profound disadvantage indeed. But the reason why my work concentrated on pain and risk was more related to my inner struggle.’(2) I have no doubt that what Hsieh says here about what influenced ‘Cage Piece’ is true, but this is also the artist who, influenced by his position as an illegal immigrant, created a wanted poster of himself only months previously. Being in this position, he worked to survive. He worked as a labourer, as a cleaner, in places where he would think of art rather than produce (although he did once film his entire shift in a Soho restaurant, lifting all the chairs onto tables, cleaning the floor then placing the chairs back down). These are jobs, at the lower end of society, which make it is easy to hide, to be invisible. Hsieh was living in a country where he had to learn the language and where the culture was vastly different to the one he knew. Frightening. In a way ‘Cage Piece’ gives Hsieh safety and security to focus on his own artistic process. He not so much trapped himself in the cage, as he prevented someone or something from getting to him. A safe retreat to be self-indulgent in and focused on the work he really wanted to do. Of course this is of a monastic scale, not an experience many will ever go through; one that is punishing, but beneficial. What is confusing is the actual choice to build the cell to imprison oneself and all that that represents. Hsieh said he wanted to concentrate on the thinking of art and to turn the thinking, the contemplation on art into the actual art. But why do that thinking in a prison cell in his studio? I’ve suggested that it might be to prevent someone or something from interfering, the cage acting as a barrier. But a room, a wall can do this also. Could he have removed all stimuli from that studio, boarded windows, and just left it as a blank room/studio? It is the symbolism and significance of the cell, of the bars, of the scratching of the days into the wall (which he agrees is a breaking of the rules of his own creating, those rules stating that there should be no writing) that make the cell necessary. He is a self-sentenced prisoner. Every three weeks during his year in the cell the public was allowed access into his studio to view. Unlike visiting in a real prison, where prisoner and visitor can converse, Hsieh had to ignore his visitors, to retreat deeper into himself. Even eye contact could reveal the emotive state so he would stare blankly at something unseen. This turns his normal situation upside down: in the world of the illegal immigrant he sought work that would keep him invisible. Now he can’t escape being seen.

The thought process could have been carried out for a year anywhere, somewhere comfortable, in a location away from people and media influence, but then there would be certain visual stimuli depending on where this retreat was to take place. So choosing his own studio where his normal thinking of art took place makes sense. His removal of all influences, of reading material, radio, television, of views from windows and of instruments in order to translate and record his uninterrupted thoughts makes sense. So why not stop there? Why build an actual cell in that studio? What was the reason behind becoming a prisoner? What was he guilty of? In an interview with Adrian Heathfield, Hsieh confesses a small guilt.

‘The main point here is that my path is not following the traditional Confucianism, which demands ethics and morality. Also my art gains no realistic success. These double reasons make it hard for my family to understand me. However, my need to be understood by them is not strong enough to change my direction. Their giving up of their expectations for me lets me go my way freely without too many worries. Even if it still brings me moral guilt.’(3)

This guilt that Hsieh mentions is a very different guilt to that deemed punishable in western society. He declares that his path is not to follow Confucianism, which focuses on the importance of practical moral values, instead aiming in a way for a moral perfection. In the Western world this may not seem to have much significance but in his native East it would hold more water. He does admit to a feeling of moral guilt generated by the direction he chooses to travel in making art and by how his family now see him. When I put the question to Hsieh: ‘Do you believe that as an artist you have a moral duty?’ He simply responded, ‘Yes’.(4) So even though he believes that as an artist he has a moral duty, it is specifically a different moral duty to that of Confucianism, a system traditionally followed in China and Taiwan. Interestingly, he does not admit to feeling guilty about that, but he does feel a moral guilt due to his family giving up hope of understanding him or his reasons for doing as he does. To try and clarify I asked Hsieh if it was only this family influence that had produced feelings of guilt or whether there was any other specific aspect of his work that had contributed. He responded; ‘As my early influences, Dostoevsky and Kafka have great insights of guilt; from my life experiences — rebellion, betrayal, punishment, suffering and freedom  — there is guilt in this cycle. “Cage Piece” may be looked as the work that relates to moral guilt, yet the thoughts of moral guilt exist on the level of thinking in my life, not something that relates particularly to a relation or piece of work.’(5) He talks of life experiences where most of us would experience some level of guilt, but he denies his family influence or his previous artwork being an influence on ‘Cage Piece’. The moral guilt exists on a level of thinking in his life. We could take this as a reason for the cell, a place that at once allows him to think uninterrupted, to indulge in his thoughts, and at the same time punishes him for doing just that.

1. Adrian Heathfield & Tehching Hsieh, 2009, ‘Out Of Now. The Lifeworks Of Tehching Hsieh’, Live Art Development Agency, London & The MIT Press, Massachusetts, p319
2. Adrian Heathfield & Tehching Hsieh, 2009, ‘Out Of Now. The Lifeworks Of Tehching Hsieh’, Live Art Development Agency, London & The MIT Press, Massachusetts, p324
3. Adrian Heathfield & Tehching Hsieh, 2009, ‘Out Of Now. The Lifeworks Of Tehching Hsieh’, Live Art Development Agency, London & The MIT Press, Massachusetts, p334
4. Email interview between Scott Robertson & Tehching Hsieh, 2009.
5. Email interview between Scott Robertson & Tehching Hsieh, 2009.

Top: Cage Piece
Photograph by Cheng Wei Kuong
Copyright 1979 Tehching Hsieh.
Courtesy of the Artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

Bottom:
Photograph by Padraic Woods, courtesy of the artist

© Matt Roberts Arts 2010