Time Clock Piece: Tehching Hsieh

Before I had seen the gallery of Time Clock Piece, I thought the title to be a bit revealing as I had a preconceived idea that the exhibition would be purely based around a matter of time or the idea of time. When I arrived to see exactly what it was, I wasn’t right nor wrong, but rather found that I took the title of the gallery for face value. Time Clock Piece is one of Hsieh’s throughly documented year-long projects that happened between April 11, 1980 to April 11, 1981. In the gallery hung many photographs, film and other factual pieces that documented the time between April 11, 1980 and April 11, 1981. These images and works are to be observed by the audience in a “story-book” like fashion moving from one image to another. But what the audience doesn’t know immediately is that the photos were taken one, every hour for the entire year as marked by the punch cards above the photos. As an audience member, this was really shocking to me and I put myself in Hsieh’s shoes. I questioned what it must have been like to have to wake up through the night every hour, on the hour to take a photo just to be woken up again in 60 more minutes. Personally, I thought Time Clock Piece was genius and I look forward to seeing more of Hsieh’s work.