In 1983, Two Artists Spent a Full Year Tied Together — Without Any Physical Contact — to Test the Limits of Human Coexistence
Discover the viral sensation spreading across the internet. Check out the community’s top reactions below.
Top Reddit Reactions
“I actually just toured this exhibit and others of the guy’s at Dia Beacon in Beacon NY. This is from memory but really fascinating stuff, he went back-to-back-to-back with all of these extremely isolating or not projects with such insanity-creating rigorous record keeping. He once stayed in a self-made jail cell for a year, he once had to clock into a location and take a picture every hour, he was homeless for a year, and then this project mentioned. He had a loft and funded the projects with the rent of other tenants living there, but they had to leave him alone. He also had once or twice a year exhibitions of each of these projects.”
“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.”
“So like… you’d get pretty comfortable with someone. Do they just chill while shitting, showering, masturbating? I mean there’d come a point where you are like whatever.”