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This year’s artist-in-residence, Ping Chong, will bring a plethora of art-based activities to campus during the fall semester, including an installation, talks, and a performance piece.
Chong’s site-specific installation, Testimonial II, will be on display in the Williams Center Gallery from Sept. 1 – Oct. 15. An artist’s talk will be held noon, Oct. 13, in the lobby of the Williams Center for the Arts, followed by a reception for the artist later that afternoon from 4:30-5:30 p.m. Both activities are free and open to the public. Chong’s acclaimed performance piece, Undesirable Elements, will be presented at the Williams Center Nov. 14 at 8 p.m.
Chong, a theatre director, choreographer, and video and installation artist, is acclaimed for his articulate and compelling presentations on American society and the dynamic interplay of diverse voices and cultural pluralism among the peoples and communities of our country. He delivered this year’s Convocation address during the Class of 2010 New Student Orientation.
Through excerpts of filmed interviews, Testimonial II, Chong’s site-specific multimedia installation, presents the continuing tensions of a multicultural society that has not yet come to terms with itself. The piece is the result of collaboration with visual artist/graphic designer, Tony Jannetti.
The work is an expansion of Chong’s epic oral history theater project, Undesirable Elements – an on-going series of works exploring the effects of history, culture, and ethnicity on the lives of individuals living in a particular community. The first Undesirable Elements evolved from a 1992 site-specific gallery installation, commissioned by New York City’s Artist Space. The piece, entitled A Facility for the Channeling and Containment of Undesirable Elements, presented a place for contemplation on the implications of being “other” in America.
Since that first production, Chong has interviewed hundreds of people about their experiences of being born into one culture but living in another, either by choice or circumstance. He has shaped the reflections of these individuals to create over 30 different Undesirable Elements, unique to each community he has worked in. The cast members of Undesirable Elements productions are real people sharing their experiences.
Chong then brought the idea of being an “other” to the visual arts and created the original Testimonial for the TransCulture show of the 1995 Venice Biennale and now Testimonial II.
This is the second site-specific, multi-media installation Chong has done at Lafayette. In the Absence of Memory in spring 1989, was mounted to coincide with a performance of Kind Ness, written and directed by Chong.
Chong will be returning for two days, Oct. 12 and 13, to meet with students both in and outside of classes. Lafayette students, faculty, staff, and area residents are invited to “Share Your Story,” either at the Undesirable Elements website, or at a page developed for the Lafayette community, which can be accessed through the Williams Center Gallery webpage.
The Lafayette “Share Your Story” page will offer students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to add their observations of being an “other” at Lafayette. Some of these responses might subsequently be posted.
Chongis the recipient of two Obie Awards including one for Sustained Achievement in 2000, six National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Playwrights USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a TCG/Pew Charitable Trust National Theatre Artist Residency Program Fellowship, a National Institute for Music Theatre Award, two “Bessie” Awards for Sustained Creative Achievement and for Outstanding Creative Achievement. In 1994, Chong held the Wynton Chair at the University of Minnesota, was a Bellagio Fellow in 1998, and received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Cornish College in 1999 and an honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from Kent State University in 2004. Since 1972 he has created over 50 works for the stage, which have been presented at major venues all over the world.
In addition to his work in the theater, Chong has also worked successfully in the visual arts. In 1985, Chong created an environmental installation for MIT’s Albert and Vera List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge as part of the inauguration of its new media arts building. In 1988, he created a trio of out door multi-media installations, Plage Concrete, as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh. The video installation Tempus Fugit was first shown in March, 1990 at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University.
Williams Center Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; 2-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, as well as noon-5 p.m. the first Sunday of each month for First Sunday Easton; 7:30-9:30 p.m. on the evenings of Williams Center performances; and by appointment. For more information, call the gallery at (610) 330-5361 or email. Additional information about the Williams Center gallery program can be found by visiting the website.
The Williams Center gallery is funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support for the exhibition and related activities is provided by the Dean of Studies office.