Looking for Lee Ming

In Looking for Lee Ming, Seth Lower uses a variety of media to recount his search for the sender of an email he received from Taipei in 2008. In the email, Lee Ming claimed to have met Lower in a dream before he was born. Lower traveled to Taipei in search of Lee Ming, consulting Facebook, fortune tellers, public databases, and other records along the way. While his search did turn up several Lee Mings, none was the sender of the email. The search was not without fruit, however, as Lower probed into the mechanics of storytelling, examining the way in which narratives are constructed and how they operate in our lives. This investigation into fictional devices and their intersection with lived experience includes a video dream sequence with a parade of strangers posing as Lee Ming constructed loosely in the style of a Taiwanese daytime drama, drawings purportedly created by one Lee Ming, oil paintings, color copies of fortunes, digital prints, and other artifacts. Each piece promises the truth but none delivers, pointing to the sometimes frustrating yet endlessly generative practice of representation.