I am Myself. My Self. My Self. Cosmonaut, Space Writer, Ego Architect, Dream Journal. AMA!

On September 30th, 1978 New York City-based Performance Artist Tehching Hsieh sealed himself inside an 11.5 x 9 x 8 foot cell in his studio for one year. During this time the artist abstained from reading, writing, conversing, and the consumption of audio and video media.

Tehching Hsieh. “One Year Performance,” (1978-1979). Life image. Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery. Photo: Cheng Wei Kuong. © Tehching Hsieh

submitted three weeks ago by melanie_jane_parker

I’ve been orbiting the earth for five years, four months, and two days. Before I arrived in outer space I attended seminary school, served in the Peace Corps, and kept a tidy kitchen garden. My hope is to be the first cosmonaut to utilize the Internet to bridge these two worlds—the world as it exists on planet Earth and the world as it exists out here on the other side. Maybe you can help me remember what it is to be human, to live in relation to something other than an environment designed to keep me just alive enough. I do hope you consider participating in this conversation.

[-] MadameOvary 0 points, 32 minute ago Dude don’t you get lonely up there?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 28 minutes ago To complain of loneliness is to assume that I am ever not alone. That I am ever “in the company of others,” when in fact I am buried deep within the gold-plated sarcophagus of myself because there is nowhere else to go and there is no one else to know. And indeed I puddle-jump between realms of experience that are only possible because I am by myself.

[-] chickenlittle111 0 points, 23 minutes ago Do you ever feel like you’re being spied on by aliens or the government?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 18 minutes ago In memories from childhood (fractured, incomplete, strung together along a fibrous clothesline), I am hyper-vigilant, always looking up, over my shoulder, wondering: who sees me? My mother at the kitchen window with the phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder, washing a dish or a water glass, saying into the telephone, “Oh, she’s playing, talking to her imaginary friends again,” and then laughing, laughing. I thought they could sense me but they couldn’t, which I soon realized. My mother didn’t know that as she said those words I was not speaking to imaginary friends but to myself, and I was not playing, I was examining the alien striations along the fallen branches on the edge of the woods. Being seen by the eye of the Other whether physical or metaphysical does not mean I am seen. I see and am seen fully only by my own sensory organs. In outer space you know there’s no one watching over you—yours are the only eyes for light-years.

[-] punkisdeadlonglivepunk 0 points, 16 minutes ago How do you get off (sexually) in that spacesuit on that spaceship?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 14 minutes ago Have you heard the phrase “go fuck yourself”? When you’re living outside the world, when the world is living inside you, when you can barely recall what skin other than your own feels like, when texture and weight become irrelevant—well, I do what I can.

[-] deviantcellist 0 points, 13 minutes ago What purpose does your body serve?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 9 minutes ago Conductor of electrical currents.

[-] paranoidandroid601 0 points, 8 minutes ago What’s your favorite thing to eat in outer space?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 7 minutes ago Dehydrated lobster, dehydrated strawberries and cream, dehydrated coffee.

[-] pickledcreamsicle 0 points, 7 minutes ago When was the last time you had a normal bowel movement?

[-] teendream77 0 points 6 minutes ago lol i wuz totally wondering the same thing!

[-] starsandstripes 0 points, 5 minutes ago Where do you find joy?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 3 minutes ago How does “joy” become a thing like a hot dog or a dumpling: “Where To Find Cheap Joy This Weekend,” “The 5 Best Joy Spots in Town,” “Get Drunk On These 4 Joy Events This Week.”

[-] antelopedreamtime 0 points, 3 minutes ago What’s the first thing you’ll do when you come home?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points 2 minutes ago Swim in the Red Sea.

[-] LemonadeParade 0 points, 1 minute ago What is the sound inside your own head?

[-] MyselfHere 0 points, 30 seconds ago Sometimes my thought patterns feel like stock market ticker tape or a railroad timetable or a demonic digital cinema marquee or 10 television screens at the OTB. Electric, firing off, bam bam bam. No stopping, no slowing down, no sleeping. Waiting, waiting for the numbers and the letters to line up. Waiting for someone to call out, to call, as in “to give a name to,” as in to identify, but there’s only a chamber echo, the resonance of a thousand empty cylinders, black holes, dark stars. My voice the sound of a coin falling through space, never making contact with anything outside itself, never singing back that ring ring ring, never circumambulating its own small shadow, never choreographing that metallic spin dance that tells me there is anything out there at all.

Written by Melanie Jane Parker