Citizen of the World: Ping Chong's Travels

In October 2002, visual and theatre artist Ping Chong celebrated thirty years as an independent artist with two representative pieces performed at La MaMa E.T.C. One was a special edition of his acclaimed Undesirable Elements series, entitled UE 92/02 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this ongoing project of documentary theatre works. The other was a reprise of SlutForArt, the Obie-winning performance piece he created with Muna Tseng, in 1999. (The text of this appears in PAJ 64.) Both choices examine similar material albeit from different perspectives, exemplifying Chong's continued commitment to explore the theme of the other, not only in his interdisciplinary performances but also in his museum installations and films. His work represents a lifelong questioning of identity and cultural assimilation.

SlutForArt is an exquisite example of Chong's work as a multimedia dance theatre maker. Incorporating visual images and voice-over testimonials with Muna Tseng's imaginative choreography, the piece celebrates the life of Muna's brother Tseng Kwong Chi, a photographer and performance artist who died of AIDS in 1990. An active participant in the East Village arts scene of the 1980s, Kwong Chi was known for his photographic documentation of the work and life of Keith Haring when he first started drawing on the subway platforms. He is also remembered for his adopted public persona, the impenetrable Chinese tourist, which he played at fashionable parties or while traveling around the world making self-portraits. Dressed in a Mao suit and wearing mirror glasses to block out his eyes because "when you can't read the eyes, you become an object" in Kwong Chi's words, he would pose in front of well-known monuments and landscapes.

From the Grand Canyon to the Eiffel Tower he created a series of mysterious iconic images, a number of which are featured in SlutForArt. To see a photograph of Kwong Chi standing erect, arms at his side, his face expressionless, next to a waving, smiling Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, is to receive the full impact of what it means to be "a cartoon guaranteed to activate stock associations as an Oriental," as a line in the performance states. He was a "cipher," according to Bill T. Jones, who was interviewed for the piece, "a smooth surface that because it was so impenetrable, it reflected everything."

SlutForArt is composed of slide projections of Kwong Chi's self-portraits and his photographs of Keith Haring's work, voice-over testimonials from friends such as Ann Magnuson, Kenny Scharf and Bill T. Jones and the memories and physical presence of his sister Muna Tseng, circling, swooping and dipping in a strapless bright red evening dress. While Muna dances for her brother, slides of an "identity fugue text" are projected behind her, composed of phrases describing Kwong Chi as a "Mao Tse Tung amid the pines, the glaciers, the snow smeared mountains" or a "SlutForArt," the name on the visitor's photo ID that Kwong used to wear with his uniform. Later, wearing a silver grey Mao suit and dark glasses, Muna trots a sexy number to Eartha Kitt's "C'est si bon" while a list of things her brother liked scrolls by behind her. Whether sitting still on a revolving drum stool, quoting her brother on why he took pictures of himself or moving with "buttery grace" (Chong's description), through her mournful "last dance for her brother," Muna has fashioned a moving tribute to Kwong Chi in a powerful dance theatre of images. Clearly, Kwong Chi was the perfect ambiguous ambassador of otherness. "He played the inscrutable, indecipherable Asian bit to the hilt," Chong said in a recent interview. "The piece is very much about my interest in the issue of otherness."

Undesirable Elements, sometimes called Secret Histories, also takes up this theme, in the form of an ongoing oral history project that explores the effects...