Tehching Hsieh is a pioneer of Performance Art. He has been called a "master" by Marina Abramovic and appears in almost every book written on the subject.

He did six extraordinary one-year performances. In 1978 he did his first one-year performance; he built a cage in a loft in Tribeca that looked very much like a jail cell. He lived in there for one year, he never came out, he never read, he didn?t write, he didn?t watch TV, he didn?t talk. His meals were delivered to him daily and his excrement taken out in a bucket. His next one-year piece was to punch a card in a time clock, every hour on the hour twenty-four hours a day for one year. He made a sixteen-millimeter film of this by releasing one frame every time he punched the clock.

The result is to see a year passing in six minutes. His next one-year piece was to spend a year outside in New York City without ever going into a building. His fourth one-year piece was to be tied by a length of rope to fellow artist Linda Montano for one year. His fifth performance was to not make art, or look at art for one year. His last performance was to make art privately for 13 years and then release the results to the public. When he released those results it was a statement saying, "I kept myself alive" and nothing else save the questions the audience asked.