4. Art/Life One Year Performance 1983-1984 — Hsieh and artist Linda Montano were tied together by a length of rope.
We will stay together for one year and never be alone. We will be in the same room at the same time, when we are inside. We will be tied together at the waist with an 8 foot rope. We will never touch each other during the year.
For anyone who might think that Hsieh is certifiable, here’s proof that he is perfectly normal: In a 2003 Brooklyn Rail interview he complained that Montano had taken too much credit for the rope piece and, in any case, it was his idea: “She took that piece and made it hers. Most people think that was her piece. The picture she always uses I don’t like it either. She is in the foreground and I am in the background.”
This should dispel the notion that there was something Buddhist or Zen about Hsieh’s approach to artmaking.
Montano, a considerable artist in her own right, claims in a 2002 interview she saw one of his posters in the street and heard a voice in her head say: “Do a one-year piece with him.” She also said his “concept ART/LIFE: ONE YEAR PERFORMANCE was inspiring, and when I decided to join him in his rope piece for a year and I got to work with this ‘genius of art’, I learned so much about time from him.”
There’s a report she is now a novice at Maryknoll Sisters in upstate New York.
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