The art of 'wasting time': Inside the book that documents Tehching Hsieh's year spent in a cage

"His head and face are fully shaved, he's wearing a white shirt with his name and a number stamped across his chest, his face bears no emotion. The next nearly 365 images in the book are near identical (bar seven which instead feature a black page that reads 'damaged negative'). The only thing that changes is the growing length of the figure's hair, the appearance of some facial hair and the creases in his shirt."

"The man in the photos is Tehching Hsieh, a performance artist born in Taiwan who, immediately after serving three years of military service, moved to New York in 1973, where he built his life and artistic career. The images in the book are compiled from the artist's first One Year Performance, spanning 1978-1979. For a year the artist willingly lived in a cage, with nothing but a bed, sink and bucket, with a friend bringing him food, clothes and removing his waste."

"As the title indicates, a key point of exploration for Tehching has always been time - its immaterial nature, but also the many ways humans try to rationalise it and make it material. "A year is a human calculation, a human philosophy," says Tehching. It's true, it's a human philosophy steeped in importance; birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Eid, New Year - a year dictates the start of something new, and the end of something old, marked by celebration as one ends and another begins."

An Athens-based publisher released a volume containing almost 365 daily portraits of Tehching Hsieh taken during his One Year Performance (1978–1979). The series begins with a shaved head and a blank expression, then records incremental changes such as hair growth, facial hair, and shirt creases; seven frames are replaced by pages labeled 'damaged negative'. During the year Hsieh lived continuously in a small cage with only a bed, sink and bucket while a friend supplied food, clothing and removed waste. The work foregrounds the materialization of time and treats a year as a human calculation and philosophy embedded in ritual and social markers.

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