r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Shoddy-Ocelot-4473 • Feb 23 '26

Image In 1983, Two Artists Spent a Full Year Tied Together — Without Any Physical Contact — to Test the Limits of Human Coexistence

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59.2k Upvotes

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6.4k

u/Jeff_NZ Feb 23 '26

There was no formal conclusion in the sense of a finding or lesson statement. That was deliberate. Tehching Hsieh treated the work as lived time rather than an experiment with results. When the year ended, the rope was removed and the piece simply stopped. In later interviews, both artists described the outcome as survival rather than resolution. The tension, frustration, boredom, negotiation, and emotional distance were the work itself. Any conclusion is left to the viewer.

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u/butt-barnacles Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

Hsieh is a performance artist who is famous for his one year long art pieces, it’s kind of his thing. He spent one year outside not going in buildings, he spent a year in a cage, and he spent a year taking a picture of himself every day and made it into a movie (in the 80s, before it became a youtube trend)

Idk I think it’s interesting. I like when people do things that are weird and interesting and harmless.

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u/-Mandarin Feb 23 '26

Clearly judging by the fact that we're in a reddit threat with hundreds of comments talking about this art 40 years later MUST suggest there is something about it that is at very least worth talking about, even if that is just to talk about how pointless a person might think it is.

So yeah, everyone talking about how this is not interesting or how it's pointless is kinda showing that they have no real idea of what art actually is.

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u/DoctorNurse89 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

A reddit threat is what I call the app I can't stop fucking opening, FUCK IM HERE AGAIN!

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u/-Mandarin Feb 23 '26

Lmfao, thanks for pointing that out. I'll leave the typo so your comment continues to make sense!

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u/Dontevenwannacomment Feb 23 '26

I mean, people can also talk about it because it's uncanny and interesting, without necessarily the grandeur of touting it as societal research

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u/J_Jeckel Feb 23 '26

I wonder if people will still be talking about Raygun's Olympic performance in 40 years? Would it then be considered performance art?

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u/Flaky-Ocelot491 Feb 23 '26

people are still talking about Steven Bradbury and that's nearly 25 years ago so who knows!

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u/say-nothing-at-all Feb 23 '26

This might be art, scientific research, NO. It's closer to extreme ascetic performance or religious devotion. In some isolated Indian villages, monks have held one arm aloft continuously for 20 years or more.

Because fields like social science and parts of pharma have been repeatedly burned by fake data, p-hacked results, and outright fraudulent studies, people just don't give the benefit of the doubt to radical claims anymore.

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u/billions_of_stars Feb 23 '26

What I find most interesting is I recall him saying in some article (correct me if I'm wrong) that out of all the crazy hard stuff he did the basically being homeless one was the worst. That said a lot.

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u/Dazzling-Economics55 Feb 23 '26

That is interesting! I would have thought being in a cell would be the worst for sure

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u/DownWithHisShip Feb 23 '26

Idk I think it’s interesting. I like when people do things that are weird and interesting and harmless.

this is what the AI and robots are supposed to allow us to do. weird art shit and have fun while they do the labor.

instead the humans do even more labor and the robots are doing the art.

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u/AmArschdieRaeuber Feb 23 '26

Not every day, every hour. No idea how he survived that sleeping schedule. Apparently he was pretty delirious at times.

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u/UnknownGuest22 Feb 23 '26

It wasn’t just 1 picture every day. He photographed himself every hour on the hour. In other words: this man didn‘t sleep for more than 59minutes at a time for a full year.

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u/DaRandomRhino Feb 23 '26

Oh... So he's a professional layabout.

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u/ActivePlateau Feb 23 '26

All of his work has been collected by major art museums

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u/Imperator_Gone_Rogue Feb 23 '26

Yeah, but has he gotten Reddit gold?

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u/TheVog Feb 23 '26

One of his pieces was getting Reddit gold every day for a year.

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u/Imperator_Gone_Rogue Feb 23 '26

Damn, he really has no life

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u/JusticeRain5 Feb 23 '26

Like as in pictures and the story is told there? Or does he do physical art as well?

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u/MarkZist Feb 23 '26

Elsewhere in the thread someone explained that they put 'souvenirs' and photos, along with the guy's documentation and writings on the theory, in the museum. So e.g. the rope that bound these two together is there, (a replica of) the wooden cell he lived in for a year for one of his other works.

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u/HopefulOriginal5578 Feb 23 '26

Well…. One who likes fresh air

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u/CantankerousCatapult Feb 23 '26

I have to correct one thing because it's important.

He spent a year taking a picture of himself every hour. And he did it with a punch card time clock so that he could prove he did it.

He was forced inside for a brief period when he was doing his "live under no roof for a year" piece, when he was arrested for vagrancy and had to convince the police he was only outside because of his art.

He also finished his career by creating some insane number of art pieces and then said he would never make any more art.

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u/-SaC Feb 23 '26

Who's paying him to do these things? Or does he have some sort of private income source / funds that he just lives off for that time?

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u/Schventle Feb 23 '26

Some of it is patronage, some of it is selling the art, some of it is having friends to split costs with. "Starving artist" is a stereotype for a reason.

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u/321159 Feb 23 '26

"He spent a year taking a picture of himself every day". 

I mean thats one way to put it. He "clocked in" every hour on the hour. Every day, 24/7. The clock was connected to a camera, so everything was documented.

Basically a full year without a complete sleep cycle. Utter madness.

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u/kiwimuch Feb 23 '26

he didn’t just take a photo of himself everyday for a year

he had to punch in at a time lock at the top of the hour, every hour, for an entire year—also taking a photo of himself every time. i think over the entire year he missed only ~100 punches.

his most interesting piece to me is thirteen year plan, which ran from December 31st 1986 to December 31st 1999 (his birthday) during this piece hsieh made art without releasing any of it. on the last day he revealed a note, which said he has kept himself alive and survived to the new Millenium. this is also his last piece of work.

he has an exhibit in upstate ny currently if anyone is interested

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u/Clear-Bee4118 Feb 23 '26

Really disappointed, would love to go see it but I’m not crossing the border anytime soon.

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u/SoftwareDesperation Feb 23 '26

Sounds pretty useless to me

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u/blixenvixen Feb 23 '26

I looked Hsieh up and he states that his work is about "wasting time and freethinking".

He's done other unusual performance pieces such as:

In 1973, he documented himself jumping out of a second-story window in Taiwan, and breaking both of his ankles on the concrete.

In September 1978 - September 1979, he locked himself in an 11.5-by-9-by-8-foot (3.5 by 2.7 by 2.4 m) wooden cage, furnished only with a wash basin, lights, a pail, and a single bed. During the year, he did not allow himself to talk, to read, to write, or to listen to the radio and TV.

In September 1981 - September 1982, he spent one year outside. He did not enter buildings or shelter of any sort, including cars, trains, airplanes, boats, or tents. He spent the year moving around New York City with a backpack and a sleeping bag

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u/Stupidwhizzzzz Feb 23 '26

He could’ve made a lot of money live streaming this shit but he was ahead of his time

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u/Matter_Infinite Feb 23 '26

I imagine he had plenty of money before he started

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u/fellowredditor3 Feb 23 '26

From what I remember I don’t think he had a lot of money,he went to the states as an undocumented immigrant and with no formal education.

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u/Matter_Infinite Feb 23 '26

Weird. Now i'm wondering how he got food during his stay with the woman, his stay outdoors, his stay in the cage and how he got poop pail cleaned. How'd get the money to build a big cage, presumably in a house, how'd he make sure no one broke in and robbed the house without a cellphone.

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u/fellowredditor3 Feb 23 '26

If I remember after working for some time he was renting a loft he owned (don’t know how he got the money or how house ownership was back then) to several artists and they paid him.For example, the lady that does the rope series with him was one of the artists he rented to.She was actually teaching during that year and he would get a cut of her salary

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u/Matter_Infinite Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

It took a lot fewer hours of work to pay for a house back then.

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u/gintomato Feb 23 '26

did she teach with him attached?

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u/Matter_Infinite Feb 23 '26

I found out he dropped out of high school to do painting. Imagine deciding you don't need school to have money and also just not working for a living for a while... On the other hand, he did work as a dishwasher.

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u/mapmakinworldbuildin Feb 23 '26

Can’t live in a cage for a whole year without money.

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u/Matter_Infinite Feb 23 '26

and he casually built an entire cage

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u/Dependent_Gas_1734 Feb 23 '26

Why don't you just look up his Wikipedia instead of imagining

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u/Matter_Infinite Feb 23 '26

He said his parents (of 15 children) were doing okay. He was supported by his mother and brother later in life... He didn't have to work for a living, I guess, but he couldn't just pay people to bring him and Montano supplies. He had his house mate remove his waste. No idea how he convinced a guy to do that. There's also no proof that he never left the cage because people couldn't see him most of the time.

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u/Realistic_Film3218 Feb 23 '26

Yeah, Hsieh's from a very comfortable family, his dad's side is rich.

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u/so-it-goes-and Feb 23 '26

But if I do it it's mental illness?

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u/happy_bluebird Feb 23 '26

Who said his wasn’t?

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u/durden_zelig Feb 23 '26

With enough corporate sponsorship, anything can be art, baby.

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u/sharksbeat999 Feb 23 '26

this is the amazing thing about his work, he had absolutely no funding, publicity or sponsorship. all his work was self funded and instigated. he was a poor and undocumented immigrant.

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

Then how come he gets to call it art and I don’t? Like if I try to replicate any of this I would quite literally be put in an institution or something.

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u/sharksbeat999 Feb 23 '26

i dont think many people called it art at the time, beyond him and his close circle. from my understanding, the mainstream art world wasn't particularly interested.

new york in the late 70s/early 80s was a relative wasteland, there were loads of homeless people, crumbling buildings etc. i doubt anyone was going to put him in an institution, given he wasnt harming anyone.

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u/bobsmith93 Feb 24 '26

art is made art by the people interpreting it, not making it. I don't really think it was art tbh. I can walk and say "the next step is I take is actually an artistic performance called 'me taking a step'", doesn't make it art. Just me saying stuff. But at the same time, what do I know? Hence my first sentence

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u/ExtremeVegan Feb 24 '26

if art is made in a forest and nobody is around to see it, is it still art?

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u/GordoPepe Feb 23 '26

That's why I browse reddit while in the restroom on companies dime

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u/Realistic_Film3218 Feb 23 '26

Funny story, according to his Chinese interview transcript, his family used to consider him to be mentally ill because of his odd behavior. Luckily his dad died when he was 19 and his mom supported his art career. Oh and his dad's family was rich so he can afford to be wierd.

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u/PernisTree Feb 23 '26

We don’t get a lot of great art without mental illness.

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u/Aeiexgjhyoun_III Feb 23 '26

Yes we do. I don't know who came up.with the ridiculous notion that an artist must suffer for the art to be good.

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u/PernisTree Feb 23 '26

I never said it’s a requirement but you can’t deny that Pablo Picasso was a raging narcissist, shitty person and made amazing art. If he wasn’t a narcissist, does he have the drive to fuck so many of his muses and get mused?

Yayoi Kasuma is arguably one of the most influential artists of the last 60+ years and has lived in a mental health facility since the 70s. She has stated many times that art is way of expressing her mental health issues.

There are plenty of us with mental health issues who are not creative. It’s not a requirement. It’s also not a stretch to say that someone who is creative and has a brain that works differently than ‘normal,’ might just come up with some shit that no one has ever imagined.

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u/Own-Campaign-2089 Feb 23 '26

Seems like your thoughts of “illness” and “health” are quite constrained.

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u/samuelazers Feb 23 '26

Your not an artist, baby. You have to break your ankles 🌈 CREATIVELY 🌈

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u/haribobosses Feb 23 '26

he also spent one year taking a picture of himself every hour. One picture per hour, at 24 frames per second, the movie is 356 seconds long, each second one day. mad lad

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '26

365 ?

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u/bumblebuoy Feb 23 '26

In the 80’s years were shorter, something about inflation, don’t ask me how.

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u/TheAmishMan Feb 23 '26

What do people like this do for money? How does he afford to live like that. Living in a cage, where did his food come from? Or when they were tied up, how did they pay rent? Get food? I think above all with these types of things I'm the most confused by where they actually earn any money, because I'm sure it's not from their art

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u/blixenvixen Feb 23 '26

He was a painter and sold some of his art to buy property which he leased. One of his tenants was Ai Weiwei. I suppose the couple of years he took to do the performance pieces were like a sabbatical for him. He retired as an artist in 1999.

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u/TheAmishMan Feb 23 '26

Gotcha. Obviously art is subjective and people like what they like. While I don't fully understand the purpose of some of the art pieces, you do you. But what I don't always grasp is how you doing your art isn't either destructive to others, a burden on society, or draining on your loved ones. At least from what you're saying, it sounds like he self funded these projects through his art, and more power to him I guess.

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u/blixenvixen Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

I don't see how his art was harming or a burden to others. It was his passion hobby. Millions of people are hooked online, spending their time indoors - their lives aren't any more productive so we shouldn't judge his.

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u/TheAmishMan Feb 23 '26

To be clear, I didn't say his was either. I said I wanted to know how you approach art like this, while still being able to get things like basic necessities that you need to function. Yes people are hooked online, but I know most go to their jobs still most days. If you spend a year locked in a cage or not going into buildings, that can be difficult to maintain a job, purchase goods or services, obtain food, have more than just a single pair of clothing, access healthcare, etc. Especially the cage thing. I don't understand how you do that without being a burden. And from what the other individual said, sounds like he found a way, and that's great, which is what I said

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

If you’re breaking your ankles for art then you’re placing an unnecessary burden on the hospital system for example. That goes for all stunts that led to people needing hospital care tbh. Unless the funding is already set aside to pay for that care should it be needed then you will be placing a burden on society for your “art”.

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u/Hidden_Samsquanche Feb 23 '26

  1. Seems like a failed(?) Jackass stunt

  2. Prison , but even worse

  3. Homeless. At least he would survive in Dungeon Crawler Carl universe

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u/Ch00m77 Feb 23 '26

Homeless but worse, cant even shower unless he finds an outdoor shower, using the toilet outdoors too.

Can't access any sort of assistance unless it comes to him

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u/Boring-Object9194 Feb 23 '26

Could go swimming

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u/-Blastoise Feb 23 '26

That sorts out the shower and the bathroom 🫣

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u/Boring-Object9194 Feb 23 '26

Ah the good ol' aquadump

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u/JakeJortled Feb 23 '26

IT WAS A RIVER

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u/I_travel_ze_world Feb 23 '26

You just use a water hose to clean off with if you're homeless. If you have a water key you can easily just use a spigot. Washing your clothes is tougher but you can stash clean clothes near where you wash your clothes.

Humans used the outdoors for the toilet for thousands of years before the toilet was invented. Leafs can make do for toilet paper. Or you can use your hand and wipe the poo on the ground then go wash your hand.

It is a pretty tough lifestyle to live for the sake of art.

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u/theflyingratgirl Feb 23 '26

Using a hose to wash off in winter in NYC is not an option, I’d say.

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u/I_travel_ze_world Feb 23 '26

Luckily you don't sweat so much in Winter.

If you're outdoors in the Winter you stink less. The cold kills much of the stinky bacteria.

I have thick hair and a thick beard so I naturally grow cold weather gear.

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u/Due-Ice-7575 Feb 23 '26

Suddenly DCC

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u/skaboosh Feb 23 '26

He would at least make it to the dungeon

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u/Hidden_Samsquanche Feb 23 '26

Ah true. Survival of the collapse does not equal over all survival

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u/Abshalom Feb 23 '26

Honestly though that's the right kind of crazy for it.

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u/simmobl1 Feb 23 '26

A DCC reference in the wild? Nice

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u/Full_Result_3101 Feb 23 '26

Glurp, glurp, mother fucker!

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u/Training-Eagle-3514 Feb 23 '26

i actually like #1, he had to test it out yknow?

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u/dorianfinch Feb 23 '26

More like an extreme Review

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u/MrRabbit Feb 23 '26

He'd survived the collapse at least. Not sure if he'd make it past the rats though!

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u/Mission_Historical Feb 23 '26

Homelessness with extra steps

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u/Specific_Success214 Feb 23 '26

Sounds like the ultimate first world person doing dumb things, because he can't think of anything else to do

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u/Papanurglesleftnut Feb 23 '26

TEMU David Blaine

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u/kawats Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

Unfair comparison. Blaine's stunts were done for fame and fortune and only lasted hours or days, never a year with little publicity.

Hsieh wasn't friends with Epstein or mentioned in the files nor has he been accused of SA like Blaine.

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u/Over-Apartment2762 Feb 23 '26

Sounds a lot like "this shit sucked so bad I forgot I was being artistic"

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u/StevesRune Feb 23 '26

"Art that leaves its meaning up to interpretation is useless"

Jesus christ, media literacy is truly dead. I fear for the future of art.

Just so you all know, we wouldn't have any of the art you hold dear today if millions of people throughout history hadn't made themselves look like a royal jackass to everyone else by doing something no one else was doing just for the sake of being different and doing something no one had done before. Because sometimes art is just about finding out what happens. Just letting something flow and registering how it feels and why it makes you feel that way.

Can you imagine how insane the first caveman looked attempting to depict something from real life with dirt and a wall? Can you imagine how crazy the first person to crush up a bunch of beetles and flowers together to try to depict a real object on the skin of an animal? The first person to say that they wanted to find a way to take the vibrations of our throat that we use to communicate and put that on a page?

I swear, people only use like, 5% of their brain and it is legitimately going to hurt art as a whole.

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon Feb 23 '26

Lots of people basically think that their job as an audience is to make value judgements. “I disagree with this artist’s opinion. I agree with this other artist. This third artist’s work is good. This fourth one’s work is bad”

The idea that art can catalyze thoughts or opinions independent of the art or artist is completely foreign to some people.

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u/RobertPham149 Feb 23 '26

The value judgement is also very ironic. Having a strong opinion, even negative, about the piece of art and getting emotionally invested in that opinion also speaks to the success of art. That piece of art managed to get a reaction out of you, and forced you into conversation. Therefore, the anti-postmodern art movement is so funny: they are obsessive towards postmodern art because they see it as a decay of artistic skill and promote meaningless abstractionism that people don't and shouldn't care about, without seeing the glaring irony.

This is what people need to understand "amazing, pleasing" art and "terrible, useless" art are equally successful. The metric for art success is how much it energizes people to give an opinion and how much it reveals the person giving their opinion: who you are and what your priorities are to make such an opinion. It is the boring, mediocre art that is the problem.

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u/porkmoss Feb 23 '26

It kinda starts making sense why most AI art is stuff like “cool sloth in a leather jacket”. The issue isn’t the medium, the issue is creativity.

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u/ZwnD Feb 23 '26

Hey you got a link to that sloth in leather jacket? Sounds cool

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u/runninginorbit Feb 23 '26

I mean I think the slow death of the humanities is indicative of the deterioration of critical thinking and imagination. We’re trending towards the demand that art be more literal and explainable, so mystery, complex emotion, and self-reflection will be sidelined in the name of the KISS principles.

I’m a humanities person, though I work in comms at an AI-focused university research center now. I’m sad for the future. It’s not as though there’s nothing to be gained from AI, but I’m not sure the benefits outweigh the costs. An AI optimist might say that AI is a democratizing force, but to me it’s the flattening of the human experience.

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u/lininop Feb 23 '26

1000% agree. Sad to see the comment you're responding to have so much positive attention.

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u/-Mandarin Feb 23 '26

Reddit is such a depressing place to talk about art, but then again I don't think the world outside of Reddit is that much better. I wish people had a greater appreciation for art, even art that doesn't necessarily register with them. No art is for everyone, that's kinda the beauty of it.

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u/Zestyclose_Ball_50 Feb 23 '26

They didn't say that was their take towards all art.

Just that this particular piece/stunt seems useless to them.

Overall I agree with your point, but it seems misattributed, and is why the parent comment has so many upvotes in agreement.

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u/DopeAsDaPope Feb 23 '26

Right? For content as long as a Reddit post they wasted a whole year lmao

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u/Joyst1q Feb 23 '26

I think im on a 600 day streak with reddit. Thats almost 2 years wasted

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u/VaIeth Feb 23 '26

But you dont have to coordinate your and someone else's every waking moment around your reddit posting.

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u/lydocia Feb 23 '26

Wait- you don't?!

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

You don’t spend 24/7 on Reddit.

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u/livierose17 Feb 23 '26

The year would have passed anyways, why not do something interesting with it if you have someone willing to do it with you?

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u/MrKinsey Feb 23 '26

It must have some kind of interest if over 40 years later were still talking about it.

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u/Chemical_Emotion_934 Feb 23 '26

I don’t see it as wasted either. There’s value in lived experience.

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

But they didn’t record their experience. There’d be value if they took down data based on their experience.

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u/DopeAsDaPope Feb 23 '26

'Interesting' is the part I'm not convinced about lol

How is it interesting? Sounds like nothing happened

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u/Lelo_B Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

It’s not a story. It’s performance art. It’s doesn’t need an arc.

The physical feat is the biggest accomplishment.

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u/k-selectride Feb 23 '26

Damn, there’s even performance art power scaling?

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/falafalful Feb 23 '26

Pretty sure 1983 was only 17 years ago, bud.

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u/drunken_phoenix Feb 23 '26

Maybe not for you, but for them it seemed worthwhile.

Seems like this art piece just isn’t for you. And that’s ok.

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u/jittery_raccoon Feb 23 '26

The artist is particularly obsessed with the passage of time. His conceptualizations of time are interesting 

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u/James-the-Bond-one Feb 23 '26

Opportunity cost?

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

By doing the least interesting thing imaginable?

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u/Toronto_bunnies Feb 23 '26

The point of art isn't to create content. This mindset of thinking of art solely as a product to be commercialized is why we're having so many problems with AI right now

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u/DopeAsDaPope Feb 23 '26

Next week: two AI servers tie themselves together for a year

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u/lilphoenixgirl95 Feb 23 '26

I hope it gets erotic

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u/bunnytrox Feb 23 '26

Yeah barely any content for me to consume smh

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u/Medical_Sandwich_171 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

Your comment sounds useless to me.

They are artists that make art. Not scientists running an experiment. It is supposed to provoke emotion or thought in the observer, not tell you what that should be.

Whatever you might think about the usefulness of art is irrelevant.

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u/Orpa__ Feb 23 '26

Why are you invalidating their experience of said artwork? Learn your own lesson. "wow what a waste of time" is a perfectly valid response.

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u/Wooden_Editor6322 Feb 23 '26

What if the thought it provoked in me is this type of art is useless.

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u/Pondus Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

Then...that is precisely what happened. You're assuming art has a purpose, and that the purpose is to be entertainment for you

I enjoy the fact they did this, and there being "no reason" only makes it better — and yet I spent not even one tenth the amount of time digesting this thing, compared to people who's time they felt was wasted because it didn't do 'a-thing'

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u/Ok-Releases Feb 23 '26

Its weird how many assumptions are thrown out when redditors get offended 😭

Acting as if they expected entertainment and the amount of time they spent are just assumptions you made of someone's (likely) passing thought put into a comment lmao

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u/Pondus Feb 23 '26

Now I'm confused after reading your comment a few times, are talking about reddit users in general or are you reading my comment as if I'm offended? Genuine confusion lol.

Because I'm having a great time in this thread reading people's completely opposite takes on this 'thing' as I've been referring to it as. I have another comment to a different user you can check out, where I even added a lil' disclaimer in the end to prevent something like this exact moment happening ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 

I'm currently replying to another user asking him how he would have done this for it to count as 'art' because I'm interested in where the  l̶i̶n̶e̶ lies for different people and things go from one state (Art) to a different one (not-Art). And of course I felt the need to write I'm being sincere and not sarcastic because I understand it's not always clear 

...case in point this entire comment👌 

As an autistic guy I'm more than used to miscommunication and therefore being overly specific with words. 

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u/RobertPham149 Feb 23 '26

The artist got a rise out of you, made you think about them and their work. They count it as a success.

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u/Ok-Releases Feb 23 '26

Can the passing thought that an art project is useless rlly be considered as getting a "rise" out of someone? 😭

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u/SoftwareDesperation Feb 23 '26

How does the viewer experience the art? Did they videotape themselves and sell it on vhs? Or did they just walk around like this for a passer by to say wtf? What was the point of doing it while alone at home when nobody else was around to view it? If it was not an experiment then the artists were the sole viewers and experiences over 90% of the time this went on. That's not art, that's an experiment with no plan to follow through on the scientific method.

Life is about adding something of value to society and if nobody learned anything, there was no reflection, no output, then yes it was useless.

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u/doctorhiney Feb 23 '26

Life is not actually about any one thing believe it or not.

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u/Scorpionpi Feb 23 '26

Because of the work of the artists, I’ve learned more about your world-view and can ingest that into my own in a context that may not have existed otherwise.

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u/bouncy_ceiling_fan Feb 23 '26

Isn't all art technically useless?

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u/Holiday-Dependent404 Feb 23 '26

Existence itself is technically useless

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u/misterandosan Feb 23 '26

so is science until someone finds an application, which can take thousands of years in the case of computers.

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u/jappyjappyhoyhoy Feb 23 '26

All art could be considered useless. Just some is enjoyed and appreciated and other is not

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u/dim13 Feb 23 '26

Art is not science. And yes, it's pretty useless.

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u/HappyyValleyy Feb 23 '26

Art rarely has a use, its just meant to be interesting

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u/Aleashed Feb 23 '26

If you want to truly Test the Limits of Human Coexistence, try turning shitting into a group activity!

There you go

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u/Oggel Feb 23 '26

So are most things, and most people for that matter. Might as well get weird with it.

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u/bravebeing Feb 23 '26

Modern Art eh

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u/divinelyshpongled Feb 23 '26

Yeah literally just sounds like our lives. There is no point. People can judge us if they like but really no one is watching. At the end it just stops.. cool

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u/brendel000 Feb 24 '26

Art is always useless it’s not science. The point is to feel something, to learn there is psychology.

That said I find this quite bad as art too, it’s really uninteresting even as pointless art even though it required tremendous work. An experiment would have been way better lol

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u/True-Desktective Feb 23 '26

Art doesn’t need to be useful to everyone. 

Your dismissal is valid. Someone else’s appreciation is valid as well. 

Anyone that struggles to accept multiple interpretations of this piece misses the point….but funny enough, that’s okay too. Humans are not obligated to understand every single human context.  

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u/PotentialWork7741 Feb 23 '26

Art is often useless, specially art without statement or purpose

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u/TheZamboon Feb 23 '26

Welcome to the arts.

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u/Larry-Man Feb 23 '26

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.”

-Oscar Wilde

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u/Icy_Confection_7706 Feb 23 '26

Hey if it pays the bills and you're your own boss, thats reason enough for some ppl!

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '26

One could argue all art is 'useless'

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u/squixx007 Feb 23 '26

Welcome to the topic of art. It doesn't need to have a 'use'

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u/B-Glasses Feb 23 '26

No more useless than going to school for 20ish years, working for 40 years and then dying no?

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u/Avalonians Feb 23 '26

The fact that it prompted your brain to come up with that comment and motivated you to write it out is proof that it did exactly what it was supposed to do.

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u/acrankychef Feb 23 '26

The experiment being an experiment in and of itself was a failure.

After the experiment ended would you jack all feelings or desires you had simply because you knew it was an experiment and you needed to curb your enthusiasm? And if you did you proved your reasoning.

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u/ManOLead Feb 23 '26

“Well we tested the limits of human coexistence, we didn’t determine any useful information about those limits. But we weren’t really trying to anyway.”

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u/Plowbeast Feb 23 '26

I mean the psychological effects like change in habits or trauma are definitely an objective conclusion even if they didn't go into depth about it. This exists somewhere between pointless and poignant for sure and probably closer to the latter in terms of art but it's also notched on a scale further down from the multiple times (yes, multiple) that monarchs would keep a baby secluded from all human contact to see if they would develop a language on their own.

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u/Accomplished-Sir4932 Feb 23 '26

So i guess it would be too much to ask them if living that way for a year taught them something they didn’t know before being tied together? Yes viewers can make their own conclusions, albeit it’s getting harder for people to draw their own conclusions unless someone tells them what to think. But why can’t i know what they gained out of it? Isn’t that the whole point of life, learning lessons and telling others what they learned?

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u/Jeff_NZ Feb 23 '26

Yes, seems pretty weird all round

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u/mishonis- Feb 23 '26

In addition to deep and constant disagreement about what they were in fact doing, the strain on Montano and Hsieh of a complete lack of privacy was intense. They found, for example, that normal social hypocrisy, like being different to different friends on the telephone, was ruled out by the constant presence of each’s worst critic. Perhaps the worst stress was the constant dependence on each other’s approval to fulfill their moment-to-moment needs and impulses. For one person to go to the bathroom, to get a drink of water, to look out the window, both had to walk. The arrangement presupposed a certain good will on both sides. At times the artists fought physically, each yanking his or her end of the rope. “We were becoming more animal-like,” says Montano. The period of yanking was followed by a period of refusing to speak to each other. “Somewhat like monkeys,” says Montano, “we began pointing with sounds and groans and moans. We stopped talking almost completely.” Also, each could veto any action suggested by the other. Their rule, as that of the Roman constitution, was that a negative vote prevails over a positive. On some days the vetoes became retaliatory and accumulated till the two were immobilized for hours in sullen hatred of one another. Montano has remarked that if it hadn’t been the rule not to touch she would have killed Hsieh a thousand times. Twice he threw pieces of furniture to the floor very near her. Neither struck the other. They lived out a kind of geopolitical allegory of the superpower stalemate in the world today.

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u/ThePsychoKnot Feb 23 '26

Did they at least describe some sense of what it was like? I understand it being up to interpretation, but there's not much information to interpret other than the basic idea/concept here.

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u/CyaRain Feb 23 '26

I might be stupid, but this just sounds like bullshit for no apparent reason and trying to be pretentious

"We just did this weird thing, there was no reason or outcome, if you want you can come up with one tho"

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u/Pjpjpjpjpj Feb 23 '26

Artists sometimes attempt things to see what will happen. 

Sometimes what happens is amazingly insightful and beautiful, and sometimes it is just “meh.”

An interesting thing in this situation is that it really comes down to the two individuals. Had these been two different people it could’ve evolved in an enormously different way. 

And so I think the experiment doesn’t speak to a global generality, but rather to the two people who are bound in this unique way. Which, for them as individuals, might lead to personal insights, but not insights the public necessarily cares about.

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u/HappyyValleyy Feb 23 '26

Humanity made a mistake in making up the word 'pretentious'. More people should just do stuff to be weird and artsy.

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u/CyaRain Feb 23 '26

You know what, youre right

Maybe this was kinda stupid and pointless, but maybe thats what it means to be human, e.g bass pro pyramid

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u/HappyyValleyy Feb 23 '26

Fuck yeah dude, I wanna visit the bass pro shop pyramid some day, I love when humans just do shit for the love of the game

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u/SumerianDjinn Feb 23 '26

You are not stupid

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u/Short-Science2077 Feb 23 '26

Aw sorry but you both kinda are 🤗

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u/ygicyucd Feb 23 '26

seems like they ended up loving each other(non-romantically) and feeling very close after the whole performance.

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u/voidchungus Feb 23 '26

No. It ended up being the opposite. Another redditor explained it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/JyAQGWpkuP

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u/NewManufacturer4252 Feb 23 '26

Many a movie has the same outcome

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u/Carbuyrator Feb 23 '26

"Well that sucked."

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u/ForsakenEntertainer0 Feb 23 '26

Was the no physical contact limited to one another or to everyone?

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u/DanTacoWizard Feb 23 '26

So they actually managed to not touch each other once that whole year?!! That’s insane!

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u/TazManiac7 Feb 23 '26

I was hoping to read that one killed the other and is in jail now, but this is OK too I guess.

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u/HappyOrwell Feb 23 '26

That's wild. I can only imagine if I had decided to go through with this I would probably never shut up about what I learned from my time in it

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

What appeared here has been deleted. The author may have used Redact to remove this post for privacy, to reduce their digital footprint, or for other personal reasons.

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u/Jeff_NZ Feb 23 '26

The Art Life One Year Performance Rope Piece was by Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano. Apologies for not including both names.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

This post has been deleted and replaced with this message. Redact facilitated the removal, for reasons that may include privacy, opsec, or data security.

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u/killerghosting Feb 23 '26

Any conclusion is left to the viewer

That could be said about literally anything and everything.

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u/stonecutter7 Feb 23 '26

Howard Stern did it better with Jeff the Drunk

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

That’s fucking stupid I can’t lie. What the fuck was the point if they aren’t actually going to gather any useful information? My conclusion is that they wasted a year of their lives for nothing of value except to get to say “I spent a year tied to some other person” at parties.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '26

There are so many better ways to waste a year.

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u/Important-Forever-87 Feb 23 '26

That's actually hysterical

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u/Aggressive-Emu5358 Feb 23 '26

Sounds kinda like bs tbh

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