Of all the “curious undertakings” of performance artists, none have been as striking as Tehching Hsieh’s lifeworks, observes the Chronicle Review, in a review of Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh, newly available from MIT Press. In 1986, the artist dropped out of the public eye to begin his final performance piece, “Thirteen Year Plan,” a period during which he would make art but not show it publicly. He emerged in 1999 with a ransom note bearing a simple message: “I kept myself alive.”

In addition to “Thirteen Year Plan,” the dedicated Hsieh did a series of one-year pieces, which included spending a year in communication blackout (no reading or writing, either), a year spent in a room punching a worker’s clock on the hour, repeatedly, and a year of total artistic abstention. “Although [Hsieh’s works] attracted a cult following in New York and Taiwanese performance-art circles, they took place out of view of the art world, which barely mentioned them,” reports the Chronicle. But the mainstream art world has “finally clocked in,” with Hsieh’s works earning exhibits at the Guggenheim and MoMA.

Source: Chronicle Review (article not available online).

In an unusual collaboration, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, and the conservation group Rare teamed up with individual artists to draw attention to eight United Nation World Heritage Sites, reports Orion magazine. All of the sites are threatened in some way—by lack of funding, floods of tourism, climate change, and a host of other pressures.

At the outset, many of the artists worried that they’d be forced into unimaginative advocacy work. “I remember thinking, ‘Do they want me to go make work about tortoises?’” said installation artist Ann Hamilton. “I mean, that is not exactly what I do.” But the museums and Rare allowed them room to respond as they saw fit. The resulting pieces highlight local issues in smart, sensitive ways.

Xu Bing, for instance, held workshops in primary schools near his site, Mount Kenya National Park. He told stories and drew pictures with the children to connect them more personally with the park, and then set up a website to auction off their work. The proceeds benefit a local organization that uses the money to replace trees lost to deforestation on Mount Kenya. 

Check out the article to read descriptions of the other projects, watch interviews with the artists, and browse a slideshow of the art. The pieces have been gathered as an exhibit, “Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet,” which is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Image courtesy of John Spooner, licensed under Creative Commons.    

In the midst of a long winter with its landscapes of white on white, strolling through the rooms of vibrantly colored flowers at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul begins to feel something like being inside the morning cartoons. The conservatory is one of those rare places in my native Minnesota this time of year where you can get close to nature without wearing three layers of clothes. Inside this poor man’s tropical vacation, pores open, eyes brighten.

I spent most of my time taking in the Holiday Flower Show in the Sunken Garden, the conservatory’s version of a rotating gallery. The show features poinsettias every year, and this year’s installment was filled with varieties bearing names like “DaVinci,” “Monet Twilight,” and “Premium Picasso.”

Jill Heim, one of three gardeners who help maintain the Sunken Garden’s exhibits, says the inspiration behind the artist theme was (foremost, of course) to delight the general public, but also (more guiltily) to keep the show fresh and engaging for the gardeners themselves.

Only a few breeders in the world are working on new poinsettia varieties, Heim says, striving to draw out new colors and patterns, better performance, and more vigor. The conservatory’s gardeners noticed that a number of new varieties bear renowned artists’ names, and voila—a theme was born.

Even the accent plants, delicate bursts of purple called ageratum, were included because recent series bear names like “Artist Blue” and “Artist Purple.” I pointed out that this tie-in wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the show—didn’t that make it kind of an inside joke for those garden nerds able to pick up on it? Chuckling, she said that while that wasn’t exactly the gardeners’ intent, she supposed there might be something to it. Sometimes it’s the little things that help get us through winter.

—Jason Ericson

The idea is pretty simple, but the message isn’t. Pay 30 Euros (around $45) to Send a Message and a group of Palestinians will spray paint your personal message on the security wall that closes off the West Bank. According to the website, the Palestinians want to show people beyond their cement borders that “We are human beings, just like you, with sense of humor and lust for life.” Most of the funds go to supporting various Palestinian NGO projects, with the remainder covering Send a Message’s expenses. 

Behind the newspaper stories and the political wrangling, there are human lives obscured by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. While the project, which was developed in a Ramallah workshop by Dutch advertising professionals and Palestinian youths, might seem too light-hearted, I think that the levity is message enough: Something can come from this conflict that does more than make you throw up your hands in frustration.

—Brendan Mackie