Processing Strangers as Vital Jouissance in Hsia Yü's First Person

This chapter explores the interplay of photography and poetry in Hsia Yü’s First Person (2016), a multimedia project that begins with random encounters with strangers in Paris. It argues that the photography, subtitles, and poetry based on them may be understood as interrogating a sense of insurmountable mutual estrangement that forms the tacit backdrop for any degree of intimacy or entanglement. The resulting conceptual artwork, the product of a procedure stretched over time, is argued to also divide the attention of reader-viewers who confront the work's complicated temporalities as discerned in the multiple forms of media and genres invoked.