Former couple tied themselves together for 365 days, but with one single rule — 'no touching'

In 1983, two performance artists committed to a collaboration that would last exactly 365 days and operate under one unusually strict condition. Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano tied themselves together at the waist with an eight-foot rope from July 4, 1983, to July 4, 1984, as highlighted in an Instagram post by @massive.archive. They agreed to remain physically bound at all times on the condition that they were not allowed to touch each other except accidentally.

The piece, titled "Art/Life: One Year Performance 1983–1984 (Rope Piece)," required them to stay in the same room and never be alone, effectively removing privacy from even the most ordinary parts of daily life. "We will stay together for one year and never be alone. We will be tied together at the waist with an 8-foot rope. We will never touch each other," their signed manifesto read, as per Artsy. They slept in separate beds only a few feet apart, waited outside the bathroom door while the other showered, and moved through the city together, whether commuting, teaching, cooking, or visiting friends. Each day, they photographed themselves and recorded their conversations. The no-touch rule added tension because the two artists had previously been romantically involved, making the restriction personal.

What seemed structured on paper soon became complicated in practice. "We had a lot of fights, and I don’t feel that is negative," Hsieh said. "Anybody who was tied this way, even if they were a nice couple, I’m sure they would fight, too. It’s more than just honesty — we show our weakness." Montano later estimated that they argued nearly 80% of the time, not only about philosophical differences regarding the meaning of the piece but also about immediate, practical decisions that most people take for granted. If one felt restless and the other tired, the rope did not negotiate. Each artist had veto power over the other’s proposed actions, and a single "no" overruled a "yes," sometimes resulting in hours of paralysis as retaliatory vetoes accumulated.

At certain points, frustration turned physical, with both pulling sharply at their ends of the rope. "We were becoming more animal-like. Somewhat like monkeys, we began pointing with sounds and groans and moans. We stopped talking almost completely," Montano said, as per Artforum. "To do a piece for one week is to separate my art and my life, is to feel myself perform," Hsieh said of the performance, adding, "We cannot go into life alone, without people. But we are together, so we become each other’s cage."

Hsieh also did a series of year-long vow works that treated time itself as the central medium. As per The Guardian, from 1978 to 1979, he lived confined inside a cage-like room without outside contact. From 1980 to 1981, he punched a time clock every hour around the clock, which he talks about in a video by Tate, disrupting any stable sleep cycle. From 1981 to 1982, he lived outdoors in New York City without entering a building, even during winter. Montano had also experimented with intense proximity in earlier works, including a 1973 piece in which she was handcuffed to another artist for three days and a 1974 performance during which she wore a blindfold continuously for three days. 

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