ART LIFE: ONE YEAR PERFORMANCE: ROPE WITH TEHCHING HSIEH & LINDA MONTANO :  INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MONTANO & LINDA WEINTRAUB - 2025

 

[Weintraub] 13:58:54

I sent you some things that would… initiate our discussion. Did you see that list?

I'm going to as questions 1, 2, 3. And if you. prefer not addressing those let me know, or if I'm forgetting something important please add that.

And let’s do it more like a dialogue. So, I'll start each dialogue section with a question, and then let it evolve. 

[Montano] 13:59:24

Okay.


[Weintraub] 13:59:29

So I thought I'd start with the nitty-gritty before we get into the more conceptual emotional stuff.

And that is, I think we'd all be interested in knowing what were the conditions of your life at the time when you undertook this project.
Did you have a partner? How are you earning money to survive? What was your mental health?
What was your physical health?

[Montano] 14:00:01

I had actually moved from California with Pauline Oliver’s 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 place# 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 TH3 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

I see. So, you had not met him. Before you came and said, I would like to be your partner for a year?

[Montano] 14:05:27

Correct. 

[Weintraub] 14:05:29

Wow, and what was that first 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 it’s benefits was the same.




[Weintraub] 14:06:25

Was he familiar with those projects that you had done?

[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 we went to eat at a Chinese restaurant and felt the rope tightening  and shrinking and 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 that would signal every time we went outside the 6 foot area. It made me satisfied to suggest this and after we discus#ed 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 it important to you to do it in a way that was visually conveying your relationship.

[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

So, one of my questions, kind of leads from what I had just said, and that is.

Were you committed to documenting? Did you know that this was going to be of interest to a broad public that they would want evidence of the experience.



[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 seem only and not listened to.



[Weintraub] 14:11:00

So, the nature of these recorded exchanges, were they, diary explorations of your emotions. Or were they factual accounts of where you had been and what you had done?

[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 he do with… 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 quite a 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 that?

[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 admire him before you undertook this. 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 to the 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 a 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

So, so, was this playful, or was it really…

[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 
[Weintraub] 14:20:52

Oh, oh, now I understand.

[Montano] 14:20:56

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. Oh. What about the rule of not touching each other?

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… either 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 worries 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 question. Can you address that? How important is that to you? 

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

So, are there times when you do things in your performance pieces like this.

Because… you know they will resonate with the people who will be observing you and studying them in years to come? Does that factor into what you're doing? Within…

[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…

[Montano] 14:27:20

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 restaurants, 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

So it's interesting that you say that, because. One of my… thoughts after you invited me to talk to you about this piece is that the closest I and 50%, or… So, of humanity have come to this kind of experience that you and he had is as a mother of a baby.
Because we are… as if still connected by an umbilical cord. We have 24-hour. Connection. Um, the baby is not there to, as a plaything, the baby is willful, has  its own needs, asserts those needs, and it's not a matter of negotiating. It just feels like that's as close as I've come to what you and he experienced. What do you think of that?

[Montano] 14:31:21

The other aspect is the disabled child in a wheelchair 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

So he provoked. This much anger, or he demonstrated it?

[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

So what… 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, 

[Montano] 14:35:45

They’re  going to do a Q&A on the 4th of October at DIA.





[Montano] 14:36:27

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
I'm looking at my own questions, seeing which one.

Actually, I had an insight regarding what you're doing, and Fluxus and Dada. Dada and pop art. So, tell me how you feel about this. Both you and those movements brought art and life together. But it seems that… their way of doing it. Was to downgrade, art so that it had the qualities of mundane life. Whereas yours integrates life and art, seems to elevate Art to elevate life, to refine life, to craft life. To make life so original that it merits the highest standards of art. So one is integrating life and art by bringing art down-to-life, and 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

Well, what you just shared is precious. It helped me understand not only this piece, but a whole lot more than that.

And gave me things to think about, ponder. 


Montano] 14:40:02

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Weintraub] 14:40:04

And, uh, I will have it if you want it, but your final statement is, like, a great hurrah, a hallelujah.

[Weintraub] 14:40:13

So, um, I… I hope that you can share that with them.

[Weintraub] 14:40:18

People. Thank you for sharing it with me.

[Montano] 14:40:20

And if you wouldn't mind, Tobe Carey at gmail?

[Weintraub] 14:40:27

I'll send it to him, did you say? Okay, yeah, I'll try to do…

[Montano] 14:40:28

Yeah. P-o-b-e.

[Weintraub] 14:40:36

Oh, I don't have a, um… send me a quick email or something, and I'll do that, okay?

[Montano] 14:40:41

Okay. Thank you. Okay, you're… I'm gonna make… I'm gonna just print it as is.

[Weintraub] 14:40:43

Um, what's he gonna do with it. Is this as a friend?

[Montano] 14:40:51

With 3 or 4 images of us that I could… could get from… I'm going to try to get a few more from Tehching. I don't have the book, it's in my archive.

[Montano] 14:41:02

And so I don't really have images of us, but uh… So it's just going to be the us, you, and me.

[Montano] 14:41:10

With a few images of the rope. Of Tehching and I the rope.

[Weintraub] 14:41:15

Hmm. Okay. This is great. Okay.

[Montano] 14:41:16

Is that okay with you?

[Weintraub] 14:41:21

Take a nap, you've done good work.

[Montano] 14:41:23

No, no, no, no, no. Your turn. It's your turn. I'm ready for you.

[Weintraub] 14:41:29

What? Oh, no!

[Montano] 14:41:30

I'm interviewing you. Yeah, that was… that was how it went.

[Weintraub] 14:41:35

Totally. That's not the deal at all.

[Montano] 14:41:39

Yeah, that was the deal.

[Weintraub] 14:41:42

Linda, I can't. And I… after this inspiring. Half hour, I just feel…

Humbled, um, as I should.

[Montano] 14:41:54

No, no, no. Will you call me when you want me?

[Weintraub] 14:41:57

Sure, yeah, that would be… I'd love to just have it…

[Montano] 14:41:59

And, you know, I love to interview.

[Weintraub] 14:42:06

Talk with you. Interview is a different thing. But yes, to talk to you is always a supreme treat.

[Montano] 14:42:09

Yeah. And we would put it on… we put it on…

[Montano] 14:42:16

Zoom, and you put it on, uh, whatever your format is.

[Weintraub] 14:42:23

Okay. Okay, if it… if it is shareable and worthy?

[Montano] 14:42:24

You share it.

[Weintraub] 14:42:29

Fine.

[Montano] 14:42:30

After… after… and listen, I hear you're doing something the same day as the opening.

[Montano] 14:42:36

October 4. What time is that?

[Weintraub] 14:42:38

Um, yes. Mm-hmm. Um, I will send you the whole…

[Weintraub] 14:42:46

Um, so I'm doing an artist talk on the Thursday, and then the other event is on the Saturday.

[Weintraub] 14:42:53

And, uh, yeah, so it's two things.

[Montano] 14:42:53

Oh, okay. Because Kathy brought… Kathy wants to go to… DIA, and also to you.

[Weintraub] 14:43:02

Oh, nice. If you can. Oh, wouldn't that be great? I hope so.

[Montano] 14:43:03

On Saturday. Mm-hmm.

[Weintraub] 14:43:07

How is Kathy? I haven't seen or heard her. She married Tony.

[Montano] 14:43:09

Oh, she's… she's married! Yeah.

[Weintraub] 14:43:15

Oh, that is very good news. She has a way of finding sweet, good men.

[Montano] 14:43:19

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Weintraub] 14:43:21

And it's great. Oh, congratulations to her. I'll send her a note.

[Weintraub] 14:43:27

Okay, so you and I will be in touch, and I'll send this to… it is as the… computer heard it, which means some of it's gonna need explanation, so…



[Montano] 14:43:38

Just your two edits. When you left the room in the beginning, that's it.

[Weintraub] 14:43:45

We do… oh, yeah, oh, okay. If I know how to do that. Okay.

[Montano] 14:43:48

No, no, no, no, you don't do the...Tobe… Tobe does that. You don't… You don't touch it, you just… Immediately…

[Weintraub] 14:43:51

Oh, good, good. I'll just send it as is, yeah.

[Montano] 14:43:57

Yeah. Thank you. Call

[Weintraub] 14:43:58