Autonomous online video by MTAA

The 1 year performance video presents itself as what could be taken to be a streaming video of two people - the artists - dressed in black, each in his own small, white cell. They appear to be quite bored - bouncing a ball, staring at the ceiling, tapping something at a laptop, etc.

This is one of MTAA:s “updates” of performances, in this the one year performances by Tehching “Sam” Hsieh, in particular the first one (1978-1979) when he confined himself to a cell for one year.

The initial request is for the viewer to watch the piece for one year. It is quite obvious that the video is not actually a one year long video, but rather assembled from smaller pieces. This does not really matter, because it will still take a year to watch it. As the artists state, what they are doing is taking the burden of sitting in a cell for one year (like Sam Hsieh actually did in his original one year performance) and instead placing that burden on the viewer.

Further reading

• 1 year performance video - the online piece, please watch for one year
• MTAA.net - artist’s web page
• one year performance - info about Sam Hsiehs performances

Structured tagging

• online
• autonomous (even if it is sort of interactive in the way that it adapts to the time zone of the viewer)
• video