“Untitled (Men I Have Ever Met)” is a one-on-one, audience participatory performance where a participant listens to me reading in an ASMR style my personal narratives about first encounters with men whom I have come to know through dating apps, mutual acquaintances, and social media. Composed of 90 episodes, the narratives describe how as a queer Asian man I have built my identity through different types of relationships with others (like dating, one-night stands, and socializing) in a foreign country. By sharing this archive of secretive stories with participants, I aim to create an intimate moment where we can speculate the visibility of queer Asians, feel the romance found in the act of reminiscing, and rethink social functions of the erotic. It also asks us to consider the meaning of interpersonal relationship building in the narrative (the main character and various men) and the performance (a performer and anonymous participants).

Inspired by Felix Gonzalez Torres’s minimal installation that represents human relationships and lifespans with light bulbs, I installed two light bulb cords on the ceiling between two chairs meant for the participant and me. When the participant took a seat, they indicated with their fingers which of the 90 episodes they would like to hear. While I was holding one light bulb, the participant held the other light bulb with a pair of gloves during the reading. The light bulbs illuminated a dark space and provided the participant warmth while I was delivering the narrative to them through a pair of headphones. The reading took about eight minutes, after which the participant and I juxtaposed our light bulbs to create an angle representing the episode number. For instance, if the participant chose Episode 90, we formed a right angle and let the light bulbs swing on the count of three. The bulbs then exploded, went out, or missed each other and continued to swing. Motivated by Korean performance artist Hee Ran Lee’s “50 Bulbs,” I creatively adopted this bulb-throwing gesture to highlight the wide range of intensities found in the human relationships explored during the performance.