# Activities of Daily Living - Hardcover

by **Lisa Hsiao Chen** (Author)

How do we take stock of a life--by what means, and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, yearlong 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia.

As Alice roots deeper into Hsieh's radical use of time--in one piece, the artist confined himself to a cell for a year; in the next, he punched a time clock every hour, on the hour, for a year--and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend, and tenderly observes her father's slow decline.

Moving between present-day and 1980s New York City, with detours to Silicon Valley and the Venice Biennale, this vivid debut announces Lisa Hsiao Chen as an audacious new talent. _Activities of Daily Living_ is a lucid, intimate examination of the creative life and the passage of time.

**Number of Pages:** 352

**Dimensions:** 1.19 x 8.59 x 5.82 IN

**Publication Date:** April 12, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 26.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 26.95 USD | In stock |

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> Updated: 2026-07-23