ART LIFE: ONE YEAR PERFORMANCE:
ROPE WITH TEHCHING HSIEH & LINDA
MONTANO: INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MONTANO & LINDA WEINTRAUB - 2025
[Weintraub] 13:59:29
Before delving into conceptual and emotional
issues, I'd like to launch our
dialogue by examining the nitty-gritty
conditions surrounding the renowned Rope Piece
you performed with Tehching Hsieh.
For instance, what were the conditions
of your life at the time you undertook
this collaborative performance. Did you
have a partner? How were you earning money?
What was your mental health?
What was your physical health?
[Montano] 14:00:01 I had actually moved from
California with Pauline
Oliveros after living
for 5 years in San
Francisco with Mitchell
Payne. While in SF I
practiced performance
and before that in
Rochester and Madison. And really becoming a
performance artist, I mean,
performing before that in
Rochester, and… Wisconsin,
but really, really being excited
about performance.
I had taught performance many places,
but mainly at the SFAI.
The scene in CA was heady and
active with Tom Marioni’s MOCA,
the Women’s Building in LA,
SFAI, And the atmosphere was
inclusive and supportive. Pauline was teaching at
UCSD and when she quit
we moved to a Zen Center
in MT Tremper NY and
lived in an A Frame on
the top of a hill with
our 2 dogs.
I was ecstatic and on the fast
track to becoming a Roshi or Priest,
my favorite archetype.
Meditation began at 4.30 AM,
and I was again living a kind
of nun life, in that it was
somewhat like the time I was in
the convent. Similar in structure
and in prayer. But then Pauline and I parted
and I guess I was looking for
a new way? And when we drove to
NYC I would see images of Tehching
posted all over NY buildings
during the OUTSIDE PERFORMANCE.
So I knew about him, read about
him in Linda Burnham and Steven
Durland’s HIGH PERFORMANCE
and actually wanted to
interview him for a book
I was writing of interviews
with performance artists titled,
PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE 80’s. His PR was so wonderful. It drew me,
and I said, who is this? Who is this?
Martha Wilson, founder of Franklin Furnace,
introduced us and he was
looking for someone to be tied to.
And after 3 years of heavy duty meditating
I was sure that working with him
would be a continuation of that process.
[Weintraub] 14:05:18 So, you had not met Tehching
Before he announced,"I would
like to be your partner for a year? [Montano] 14:05:27 Correct. [Weintraub] 14:05:29 What was your first
impression of him?
What was your initial
encounter like? [Montano] 14:05:34 Uh, Tehching is very,
very easy to like, and very,
very…magnetic and very wonderful,
and I was excited because
I had been handcuffed to Tom
Marioni for three days,
I had lived as 5 different
people in a locked room with
video access outside the room.
I had lived blindfolded in more
than one, maybe three or four galleries
in California for 7 days each time.
So I really resonated with him.
Our time frames differed
but the fascination with endurance
and its benefits were the same.[Weintraub] 14:06:25 Was he familiar with the many
endurance projects that you
had already enacted [Montano] 14:06:33 No, not really. Not really.
So we took time, got to know
each other, we rehearsed
wearing the rope for 3
then for 4 days. And one practice
day we took a shower because
our vow was to be in the same
room at the same time.
Never touching. One inside
the shower, one outside
the curtain. After the
shower, when the rope was
still wet, we went to eat
at a Chinese restaurant
and felt the rope tightening
and shrinking as it dried.
We had to be cut out of it.
He researched and found
a different unshrinkable rope. I was truly trying to think
and give input so I
suggested that we use
a mechanical, sonic, Machine-operated device,
instead of a rope, that
would signal every time we
went outside the 6 foot area.
It made me satisfied to suggest
this and after we discussed it we
both agreed that it would be easy
to roam, cheat, not obey the rule
of the piece and that we needed a
leash, a rope, a physical deterrent
to wandering and cheating and breaking.
[Weintraub] 14:08:41 Was the rope also important to you
because it provided a
visual way to convey the
special relationship between
you and Tehching? [Montano] 14:08:54 I was addicted to that
because I had already had
a really happy, public performance
career in CA for 10 years
so I liked I liked performing.
And I was used to asking people
to journey with me verbally
and visually and psychologically,
and performatively, so that…
that was… that was very easy.
Publicly conveying our
relationship was easy.[Weintraub] 14:09:29
Did
you anticipate that this year-long
experiment in interpersonal
relations
was going to be of interest to the
art community? Did you
design this
artwork to assure that evidence
of
your mutual experience would
be generated? Did documentation
factor
into the work’s structure?
[Montano] 14:09:47 Tehching is a master documentor.
All of his performances will be
at the DIA. They're all highly,
highly… thought out, documented.
Documentation is part of his process. During the rope we took a
photo every day. Traded off
the camera, who would do it. And we recorded every word we said.
So there are… I've forgotten
the number. He knows…
the number of cassettes we made.
The process was that we
ALWAYS wore a cassette
recorder and recorded EVERY WORD
we spoke to ourselves or others.
At the end of the performance
they were sealed never to be
listened to again. They are part
of the documentation: tapes to
be seen only and not listened to. [Weintraub] 14:11:00 Please explain the nature of these
recorded exchanges. Were they,
diary explorations of your emotions?
Or were they factual accounts
of
where you were and what you did?
[Montano] 14:11:17 Oh, they were just whatever
conversation we had with each other
...or with a visitor, or,
on our job if we talked.
I taught at Tyler School of Art for
7 months and that’s all in the tapes.
He is a master carpenter and all
words spoken on his job are on the tapes. Everything that happened in
Tyler is on these sealed
forever secret tapes.
[Weintraub] 14:12:06 And what did you do when
he was doing carpentry? What
did he do when you were teaching?
[Montano] 14:12:09 While he did carpentry
I stood near the ladder
handing him nails, saws,
screwdrivers. And when I
taught at Tyler, we told them
they're getting two-for-one.
And just his being there was
a great teaching because
the students were performance
artists, and they knew about
him and could learn by observing? So they… they were able to study
him by just visualizing and vision…
envisioning and having him there as
a living document, um, I don't
remember him engaging in dialogue
with them but truly he's a master
at that, and he travels all over
the world talking about his work.
And he's extremely philosophical
and extremely art historical and
expressive, and able to place
himself in the history and
place himself in literature
and philosophy and Buddhism. [Weintraub] 14:13:04 This is a glowing testimonial
for him. How might you imagine he
would describe you? [Montano] 14:13:16 He said I was the most
honest person he ever met. [Weintraub] 14:13:20 What do you think he meant by 'honest'? [Montano] 14:13:20 He watched me, got to know me,
and he gave a tarot reading
without cards! That's what he
was picking up from me. And I loved that.
I thought that was wonderful,
because I'm a lifest,
I'm not an artist, I'm a lifest,
and that was a life reading and
I applauded that because my work
is about making me better,
transforming me, not about making ART. But philosophically,
aesthetically, we were in
two different camps.
He saw me as a feminist
and as a woman artist, and… He's so… he's directed,
art directed
although the results
LOOK LIKE MEDITATION
and living on the street
for a year,
time clock, every hour on
the hour for a year,
and living in a cage for a
year are not about transformation
for him. he sees it as HIGH ART.[Weintraub] 14:15:00 I gather you admired him
before you undertook this.
But when did you start loving him? [Montano]
Uh, right away. Yeah, right away,
and then, and then the
performance began. And we were like two bulls in a
china closet trying to get to
the same shelf but the
shelf was glass! I see it as
a trip into not only the
subconscious, but to the shadow,
Jungian shadow. Where I came
into the performance as the
good girl, I was the Catholic,
I was the nun, I was living
in the Zen Center, meditating 24-7.
But what happened is that the
constrictions drove my hidden rage,
nastiness to the surface and
I will be forever grateful to
the experience for the gift of
looking at my hidden submerged shadow.
But it was PERFORMANCE
ANGER and helpful MEDICINE for me.
For him? I don’t know the answer.
Anger inside a performance is medicine? I will always thank him for bringing
to the surface a more authentic
and passionate response to life.
I got to match his authenticity,
his scream, and it was kind of wonderful. [Weintraub] 14:17:00 How did he manifest this wildness? Montano] 14:18:00
Maybe the permission, yeah,
the permission to be authentically
unafraid of speaking truth forcibly! And I was participating
in this ordeal as if
I was a Zen student,
focusing on mindfulness,
carefulness, and knowing what
was happening every minute.
The rope did that for me.
The rope became a meditation,
but not… certainly not a sitting
and being quiet meditation.
It was a meditation in action,
it was a meditation in honesty,
in emotion, it was a meditation
in paying attention. It was a
meditation in/of danger. For example, he would say,
let's go ride the bicycle.
And we would get on… two
different bikes. [Weintraub] 14:19:14 Oh! [Montano] 14:19:14 And we rode across the
Brooklyn Bridge one day,
and you know, that was fine.
He wanted to do it… And on off days I would
fight about who would ride
on the first bike!
“HSIEH, let me go first. [Weintraub] 14:19:30 Was this playful, or were you
really taunting each other?
[Montano] 14:19:31 No, sometimes it was sometimes
that we were so imprisoned by
each other that sometimes it was
a jockey for power and jockey
for who's who. A jockeying,
a male, female who's first
and who's second, and then another
time we were playing with the
danger aspect. Danger is
an aphrodisiac. Speaking of dangerous times,
we didn’t carry knives and
once he got into an elevator
ahead of me and the door closed.
Me outside the elevator,
the door closed on the rope,
he was inside. I stood there frozen.
But he is quick and pressed
the OPEN DOOR button and we
shrugged it off, went home
and laid that experience to
rest in our many memories of
the year together. We mirrored
COURAGE for each other
during the year of
And, um… he was smart enough…
he's, you know, he's a master.
He's a master carpenter,
he's a master artist,
he can do anything.
And he was smart enough to
open the door. [Weintraub] 14:21:12
Oh
my goodness. This story provides a
vivid account of the totality of
your
sharing: danger, comfort, and all the
conditions in between.
How did your
rule of not touching each other
factor into his?
[Montano] You know, we didn't touch each
other, but we kept a list of
one hundred times we accidentally
brushed against each other. [Weintraub] 14:21:39 Did you touch anyone else
during that period? [Montano] 14:21:48 We became so phobic.
It was not comfortable being
physically in contact with
anyone because we couldn't
touch each other. And, you know,
all the no's, no, no, no,
you can't, can't, can't. I’m literally studying
about this piece via the
interview with us and Alyson
and Alex Grey because I don't
remember 40 years ago.
And this is the only thing ever
said about it BY US. Plus one
article I wrote about
the rope in Profile Magazine
via VDB. And I'm so grateful
to you and this interview
because it is helping me
remember the details of that year,
over 40 years ago. I'm talking to
you with a bit of remembering
details because I read these
two sites. [Weintraub] 14:23:08 Have you been tempted to
listen to the cassettes? [Montano] 14:23:14 No, they're perpetually closed.
They're never going to be
listened to. [Weintraub] 14:23:23 And is that part of your
requirements? [Montano] 14:23:28 His concept… And so, you know,
it’s fine with me, it’s ok and
it becomes just a kind of
Duchampian,Fluxus,
gorgeous mind game that
I love very much and am
grateful to him for devising it.
I appreciate clean concept,
conceptual art, which was,
you know, hot and heavy 40 years ago.
And it gave us something to Do! I was formed by Catholicism,
and 2 years having been a nun,
and then… and then 3 years in
the Zen Center, and then
5 years in an ashram,
and a green belt in karate!!!
So, the mind, training the mind,
training the mind, training the mind,
make it look like art, doesn't matter,
it’s just that I got out of the
spiritual institute,
make my own way, ART! And so that eventually, just,
it's all about preparing for
death, you know. And this piece
had that aspect of danger, which
all of his pieces have. So the
death aspect was quite,
quite strong there, and I
really… You know, I think
about my parents who had to sit
here in the house where
I'm sitting fearing I would die! And they worried about me.
Because they would probably imagine,
I'm sure that I was in grave danger.
I have in the notes that I talk to
them on a weekly basis,
I don't remember that. But I'm thinking about that concept
of consequence. What happens
when one's work has consequences
that affects others, that…
that bothers others, that
worries others, that… [Weintraub] 14:25:29 Well, that's a crucial question
that begs to be addressed. How important
is ‘affect’ to you?[Montano]
As I age, I still play hard.
I play hardball.
And I think this weekend
I was playing like a 20-year-old.
Performing toooo hard, but back
to responsibility in the work,
with the work when it is time to
tai chi and not karate punch!!! [Weintraub] 14:26:31 Are there times when
you do things in your performance
pieces because… you know they
will resonate with the people
observing you and - will be pondered in years to come?
[Montano] 14:27
In the last probably 20 years,
my work has been almost totally
interactive, and about including
others, and I'm a… my… that aspect
of myself that is… Uh… kind of almost like,
is this the end trainer?
It's more in the realm of Zen,
where it's really about let’s
do this together, and let's
really jump up and down with it,
but I think I'm… asking myself
to kind of pull back and
try the gentler approach. For example during the rope,
we fought so much that we even
couldn't go out, or we had 4 or
5 ways of communicating. In the
beginning, we talked 5 hours a day. And then the communication broke
down and changed from TALKING:
so we would say, I need to go
to the bathroom, or we'd say,
I'm hungry. Then we PULLED
each other to the bathroom,
then we POINTED to the bathroom,
then we GRUNTED as the last least
friendly form of communication. Tehching did all the cooking.
I don't cook. We went to Chinatown,
we ate on the street, went to
Chinese restaurants. He has a very
kind mother heart. We visually represented the archetypes
for those seeing us: mother-son,
father-daughter, police, pregnancy,
s&m, spiritual discipline, master-slave,
prisoners, marriage partners. Etc. [Weintraub] 14:30:19
This
statement relates to my personal considerations of this work.
I
searched for a comparable experience in my life, one that bears a
resemblance to the extreme togetherness that you and Tehching
underwent. I might have discovered one. This test of mutuality is a
vital part of my biography. It has been shared by approximately 50%
of humanity since primeval times. I’m referring to the link between
mother and infant. The umbilical cord that is implicit in these
interactions seems to correlate with the physical rope in yours. Like
you and Tehching, mother/baby interactions transpire continuously
throughout each day.
Furthermore, infants are not compliant partners. They are willful beings, continually asserting their needs and demanding satisfaction. The survival of the human species has always depended upon inseparability. Might you and Tehching have tapped into this primal experience?
[Montano] 14:31:21 The other aspect is the
disabled child in a wheel chair
always tied to the mother.
Or the Parkinson's patient
who needs somebody to help
them walk to the bathroom.
Or the young man… who's
working on this truck
that's putting down asphalt
all day long, and is inhaling
poisonous fumes. Artists often do something hard
in order to give courage to
others and to give courage to
themselves. Sometimes marriage is just
like what was happening with
us only we had that luxury of
knowing that the distemper of
tempers that happened, probably
in marriages, the anger and rage,
of things that come up would soon
be over. We did the fast track.
We did a year, but some
marriages last many, many
years, and they… they don't
have that luxury of getting it
all over and done with
in a year. I feel like I… I had a quick course in wrangling
out of myself and out of my good girl. And that produced incredible rage.
An incredible distemper. And, I
thank the piece for that. I came…
I came off… [Weintraub] 14:33:36 Did he provoke this much anger
in you? Or did he demonstrate
his own anger?
[Montano] 14:33:39 No. I’m stubborn and bossy.
You know, it was all good, but it
was just… Also frustrating.
And it was also limiting, and it
was also ego-bashing.
I mean, we're both very strong egos. [Weintraub] 14:34:43
What happened when you
disagreed and your egos clashed? [Montano] 14:34:51 I need to go to the bathroom.
Then… we… we pulled on the rope.
If I had to go to the bathroom,
I'd pull the rope and go toward
the bathroom. And then there were four
aspects of communication.
Um, I'm not gonna… find that
easily, but the last one was
we grunted. We became animals.
And so our language…
disintegrated into sound. But the first couple months,
we were chit-chatting, chit-chat. [Weintraub] 14:35:38 Have you sat down with him to
recall? This experience that
you shared? [Montano] 14:35:38 No, no. They’re going
to do a Q&A on the
4th of October at DIA. Linda, thank you so much
for helping me remember
this performance. Shall
we do one more question,
and I think that we
did beautifully.
[Weintraub] 14:36:28
Actually,I had an insight
regarding what you're doing,
in relation to and Fluxus and Dada.
Dada and pop art. Please tell me
how you feel about this. Both you and those movements brought
art and life together. But it seems that their approach was to
downgrade art so that it had the qualities of mundane life. Whereas
you integrate life into art by elevating
life, refining and crafting it, making life so original that it merits the highest standards
of art. They integrate life and art
by bringing art down-to-life. I believe
you're integrating art and life by
bringing life up to art.
[Montano] 14:37:49 Wow. Linda that is so beautiful.
I was raised very, very strict,
very, very strict spiritually.
And I wanted an excellence.
I wanted the art to strip ideas,
I wanted it to train me.
I wanted it to enlighten me.
I wanted it to… be an example
for others. I wanted it to… I wanted it to be God's work or
goddess's work, or Mary's work.
And so I wanted that sacred aspect.
And for what that piece…
what that rope piece was able
to give me was all of that. Plus, the added benefit of Carl Jung’s
shadow work. Which was,
if you don't look at the crap…
If you don't if you don't look at
the danger, if you don't
look at the anger,
if you don't look at the Fear
that is hidden down there,
then… I don't want those qualities
to visit me on my deathbed.
So I think that rope piece
for helping me get prepared
to die. The end.
Thank you so much,
Linda Weintraub.
You know what? I asked
you to do this,
because I didn't think I could
do what we just did.
Forty years ago is
hard to remember. And I thank you,
thank you, thank you,
thank you, thank you. You gave me my wings,
and I'm so appreciative,
thank you. [Weintraub] 14:39:48 What you just shared is precious.
It discloses the potential of human courage, adaptability, and nobility.
On behalf of the readers, thank you for providing these insights.
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