Tehching Hsieh’s Performance Legacy Lives On

Kat Herriman: What is your preferred pre-performance ritual? 

Tehching Hsieh: I do experiments to test the work, to find out if I missed anything.

KH: How would you describe the role and responsibility of an audience?

TH: My work has strong invisibility; audiences will use their own life experiences to imagine and think about the work. The audience is the witness of the work; without an audience, my work wouldn’t exist.

KH: Does recording a performance change how it feels to make it?

TH: My performance is real-time at the present. Document is recorded time. When time passes, the work is gone. The document is the trace and evidence of my work.

KH: What's the relationship between you and your stage self?

TH: In my work, there is no difference between art time and life time; they are both doing life. The difference is that art has a form. I shall follow the roles and discipline.

KH: What do you hope to see more of on stage in the near future?

TH: Time is a big theme and, like a container, artists could create different works freely to fill it in.