This is my first performance in Chicago.

 

My friend Hsinyen and I dressed in black and put on paper bow-ties, standing in front of Félix González-Torres’s work “Untitled” at the 2nd floor of AIC modern wing: a fancy golden-bead curtain hang from the ceiling, after it were the collections of this artist’s works, all of them are named as “Untitled”, whether it is a pile of candies in the corner or a pile of papers in front of the wall. Every time if there was someone trying to pass the fancy curtain, Hsinyen and I would greet the visitor with “歡迎光臨”（huan yin guan lin, means “welcome” in Chinese） , meanwhile lifting up the curtain for the visitor. Not only being very welcoming, we also tried to provide simple guidance for the visitor, like “You can pick up a candy” or “You can take a piece of paper with you”, but we only spoke in Chinese.

 

Although we would like to provide free Chinese Instruction service in the museum, the AIC administrators were not too happy that we did that without getting permission first. That’s the reason why there is only a short footage of this performance, the security guard asked us leaving immediately after we guided our first visitor. After that, no matter where we walked around in the museum, there was always some staff expressing their concern to us. One of the security guard told us that the staff was pretty nervous on that the day because the date that we did that in AIC happened to be Sep. 11th, and the fact that both of us were foreigners dressed in black didn’t help at all.

 

Anyway, that is how my 1st performance was welcomed in Chicago.