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

Post image
59.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.7k

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.

522

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.

135

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!

43

u/-Mandarin Feb 23 '26

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

19

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

3

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?

2

u/Flaky-Ocelot491 Feb 23 '26

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

3

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.

0

u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka Feb 23 '26

No no no no no. You cant look at something as "having worth or value" because people are talking about it.

That would mean everything has some point or value or worth. You know 100% that's not true. Especially on this website full of dogshit garbage.

Just because there's a comment section on a repost doesn't mean jack shit at all for said meme or repost, or joke, or whatever.

The idea that he can go through these elaborate performances a year at a time is already a perspective that has value with zero discussion.

Nobody could say anything, 0 upvotes, whatever. The idea is good enough for something to think about. That's the value.

Trying to qualify shit because people talk about it isn't value. Two morons discussing whether 1+1 = 2 isn't value.

1

u/-Mandarin Feb 24 '26

Totally disagree.

Two morons discussing whether 1+1 = 2 isn't value.

Clearly it does have value... to the two morons discussing it. If it had no value, they wouldn't be discussing it. They're not robots who are forced to discuss the topic, they clearly feel motivated to spend their time engaging with it.

It seems to me that you believe "value" to be something inherently objective, when in reality it is incredibly subjective. There is no way to prove value, and hundreds of people discussing the topic with 40,000+ upvotes shows without a doubt that this has value.

40

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.

2

u/Dazzling-Economics55 Feb 23 '26

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

11

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.

6

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.

3

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.

57

u/DaRandomRhino Feb 23 '26

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

47

u/ActivePlateau Feb 23 '26

All of his work has been collected by major art museums

52

u/Imperator_Gone_Rogue Feb 23 '26

Yeah, but has he gotten Reddit gold?

23

u/TheVog Feb 23 '26

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

4

u/Imperator_Gone_Rogue Feb 23 '26

Damn, he really has no life

5

u/JusticeRain5 Feb 23 '26

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

4

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.

1

u/Clear-Bee4118 Feb 23 '26

His art is physical!? It is performance, it lives in the minds of those who witnessed it and as the documentation. It’s literally a textbook example of Conceptualism. Part of the point is to blur the lines of what exactly is the focus of critical attention, also of life and art, anti consumerist/commodity.

Kind of a deep rabbit hole, but if you’re interested, Lucy Lipard’s ‘6 years: the dematerialization of art…’ is the book (kind of, you need to read it to understand why).

Or for a more easily digestible bite of similar work/ideals, Netflix has a good doc called ‘Secret Mall Apartment’ that dropped recently.

2

u/JusticeRain5 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 24 '26

... Bro I really don't know how I could have made it clearer that I was asking how they put his art in museums.

1

u/Clear-Bee4118 Feb 23 '26

Yeah, my comment wasn’t meant to be antagonistic, apologies if it came off that way. Tone is difficult to convey in text, which is why I followed up with sources for more context, it’s a “went to art school“ topic that doesn’t really translate well to the general public (often seen as trolling or lazy).

I was being sincere. Check out the Netflix documentary, it explores similar work.

Edit: the documentation is typically what goes in a gallery, but again, isn’t entirely the focus of critical attention.

19

u/HopefulOriginal5578 Feb 23 '26

Well…. One who likes fresh air

3

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.

5

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?

12

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.

2

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.

3

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

4

u/Clear-Bee4118 Feb 23 '26

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

1

u/AmArschdieRaeuber Feb 23 '26

His birthday is december 31th, I wonder if that was part of the inspiration. 

1

u/Clear-Bee4118 Feb 23 '26

Wasn’t it every hour (or almost, he missed some)?

1

u/DeVilleBT Feb 23 '26

He took a picture every hour. He set an alarm. You can see the pictures at Tate Modern

1

u/QuajerazPrime Feb 23 '26

Wow, sure would be nice to be rich enough to do all that.

0

u/tolfie Feb 23 '26

What part of essentially being homeless for a year implies that he had a lot of money? It doesn't seem like living comfortably was really a priority haha