2012 Pilot Program: Tehching Hsieh’s Performance Art
The topic lecturesⅠ
10:00-12:30
Moderator: Acting Director Weng Chih-Tsung
lecturer: Tehching Hsieh
Theme: “Tehching Hsieh Talks About his Art Works”
The topic lectures Ⅱ
14:00-15:30
Lecturer: Adrian Heathfield
Moderator: Jow Jiun Gong
Theme: “Walking Out of Life”
The topic lectures Ⅲ
15:45-17:00
Lecturer: Lee Weng Choy
Moderator: Jow Jiun Gong
Theme: "Some Reflections on Time, Tehching Hsieh and Performance Art in Southeast Asia"
The Panel Discussion
17:00-18:00
Discussants: Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Heathfield, Lee Weng Choy and Jow Jiun Gong
Lecturer Introduction
Tehching Hsieh was born on December 31th 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan. His father, Ching Hsieh, was an important local figure and an atheist, and his mother, Su-Chiung Hung, a devoted Christian. Hsieh dropped out from high school in 1967 and took up paining. After finishing his army service(1970-1973), Hsieh had his first solo show at the gallery of the American News Bureau in Taiwan. Shortly after his show, Hsieh stopped paining. He made a performance action, “Jump Piece,” in which he broke both his ankles. He trained as a seaman, which he then used as a means to enter the United States. In July of 1974, Hsieh finally arrived at small port near Philadelphia.
He was an illegal immigrant in the States for fourteen years until he was granted amnesty in 1988. Starting in the late nineteen-seventies, Hsieh made five One-Year Performance and a “Thirteen Year Plan,” inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art. The first four One Year PerformanceMade Hsieh a regular name in the art scene in New York; the last two pieces, intentionally retreating from the art world, set a tone of sustained invisibly. Since the millennium, released from the restriction of not showing his works during a thirteen-year period, Hsieh has exhibited his works in North and South America, Asia and Europe. Hsieh and his wife, Qinqin Li, now live in Brooklyn.
Adrian Heathfield is a writer and curator working across the scenes of live art, performance and dance. He is best known for his essays and for his books including Perform, Repeat, Record (edited with Amelia Jones), Live: Art and Performance, Small Acts and Shattered Anatomies. He co-curated the Live Culture events at Tate Modern in 2003 and a number of other performance events across Europe over the last ten years. He has also created a series of dialogue performances with a range of writers and artists. He is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London.
Lee Weng Choy is an art critic. From 2000 to 2009, he was the Artistic Co-Director of The Substation arts centre in Singapore. Lee currently serves on the academic advisory board of the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, and is president of the Singapore Section of the International Association of Art Critics. He has lectured on art theory and cultural studies, and his essays have been published in numerous periodicals, catalogues, and books, including: After the Event: New Perspectives on Art History, Broadsheet, Forum On Contemporary Art & Society, Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the Early 21st Century, and Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985.