The two participants, performance artists Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh, laid out strict guidelines for how this unusual project would unfold and what would be required from both of them over the next 12 months.
“We, Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh, plan to do a one-year performance,” they wrote as part of their explanation for the year-long performance.
“We will never touch each other during the year.”
According to ArtForum, the pair slept in separate beds that were only a few feet apart. When one of them needed to shower, the other waited nearby, and they remained celibate throughout the entire year to stay true to the rules they had set.
This wasn’t even Hsieh’s first long-term experiment. He had previously spent a year living inside a wooden cage without speaking, another year punching a time clock every single hour, and even a year spent entirely outdoors.
Montano also had experience with endurance art, including a performance where she spent three straight days handcuffed to another person.
They soon “stopped talking almost completely,” with Montano explaining that they felt as if they were “becoming more animal-like.” They argued without touching by pulling forcefully on the rope whenever tensions rose.
Montano shared that instead of speaking, they “began pointing with sounds and groans and moans,” and this breakdown in communication made even basic decisions difficult since neither could act without the other’s approval.
Yet as the year neared its end, the relationship softened. Hsieh explained that “80 days before the end, we started to act like we were people. It was almost as if we surfaced from a submarine.”
