To Be & Not to Be: Exploring Queerness through Dramaturgy with Ming Wong

Ming Wong: Performance as Archival Practice

Ming Wong’s artistic practice intertwines performance, queerness, and archival methods to challenge dominant narratives of identity, history, and cultural memory. Through the act of performing, collecting, and translating various materials, his practice itself becomes a method of archiving—one that seeks to preserve marginalized histories while simultaneously questioning the ways in which culture is remembered and transmitted. Wong's work, rooted in his personal experiences as a queer Singaporean Chinese artist navigating different cultural landscapes, reflects a deep engagement with alternative forms of knowledge production and self-representation.

Embodying Queerness

“I think it gives a rich perspective to the viewer when they can see themselves, being portrayed through another body, to a body which is very obviously not deemed the correct body.”

                                                           (Wong, 2024)

There we sat together; the conversation turned to his practice of performance art. He spoke about embodying the many different characters he has portrayed over the years through his reinterpretations of iconic films and performances. To Ming Wong, Queerness extends beyond sexuality, encompassing a broader sense of identity that includes race, gender, culture, and anything that is marginalized or underrepresented. The Queerness can be seen in the fluidity of his recasting and retellings of existing films such as In the Mood for Love (2000) and Imitation of Life (1959).

Queerness in Artistic Process, Thinking, and Making

Queerness is embedded not only in Wong's subject matter but in his entire approach to art making. His practice resists fixed categories, working in the in-between spaces of identity, language, and performance. As he described in the interview, his journey to London in the early 2000s was as much a personal search for identity as it was an artistic pursuit. The London queer scene at the time offered a vibrant network of artists, performers, and curators who, like Wong, operated at the margins of mainstream culture. He found community among artists of color, non-conforming individuals, and experimental platforms—alliances that shaped both his worldview and his artistic language.

Wong's interest in performance stems from this experience of living between multiple identities. He describes how being queer in a new cultural context heightened his awareness of how bodies are read, desired, and exoticized. His early engagement with theater, along with his observations of cabaret and queer club scenes, became formative in developing an understanding of performance as a means of negotiating identity. In Wong’s words, “performing your identity” became a way of asserting agency in the face of external projections. His works often involve re-enactments of cinematic scenes, placing his own body into roles that disrupt conventional ideas of gender, race, and belonging—an act of queering both personal and collective histories.

Behind the (Queer) Scenes

“I think dramaturgy is important. Dramaturgy as in trying to find out how to express an idea over time. That makes the best effect. So, like, you don't tell everything in the beginning. You slowly give little clues and then maybe towards the end, you bring it together. You hold a tight line with your audience. You maintain a kind of suspense or surprise so that people will be engaged.” 

                                                                        (Wong, 2024)

Ming Wong’s dramaturgy channels Queerness effortlessly, extending itself beyond the characters and into the technical aspects of his video works. For example, works such as Angst Essen/ Eat Fear (2008) and Lerne Deutsch mit Petra von Kant (2007) are filmed with a purposeful, low-budget aesthetic, utilizing green screens, simple backgrounds, and playful wigs and costumes. Wong highlights the beauty of lower-budget projects, which encourage ingenuity and creativity to emerge from existing limitations—ultimately becoming part of the work. He elaborates that the act of “making do” and “compromising within limits,” in this case financially, have always been the strategy of the outsider.

Archival Methods

Archiving plays a central role in Wong’s practice, particularly in his long-standing research into Cantonese opera cinema and science fiction films. His archival process is not simply about collecting materials but about creating his own archive of underrepresented cultural forms. As he explained, many of the films he studies—Cantonese opera movies from Hong Kong or Eastern European science fiction films—do not exist in institutional archives. They circulate through unofficial channels, low-quality VCDs, or online communities. By sourcing, translating, and assembling these materials, Wong becomes both an artist and an archivist, preserving cultural forms that have been sidelined by dominant historical narratives.

Inspiration and the Role of Archiving in Practice

Wong’s archival research informs his exploration of how cultural identity is constructed through media. He views old films, posters, and ephemera not simply as historical documents but as portals into alternative ways of imagining the self. The process of searching for these materials, often through social networks and artist gatherings, becomes a way of uncovering hidden or neglected histories. This desire to look beyond the dominant narratives of the past stems in part from his experiences of growing up in Singapore, where multiculturalism was often taken for granted rather than critically examined.

By assembling his own archive, Wong creates a space where multiple voices and fragmented histories can coexist. His practice suggests that archiving is not only a way of preserving the past but of reimagining the future. In his own words, this process of collecting and performing is a way of “identifying your own position—who you want to be and what you want to be.” Wong’s work thus proposes a queer, speculative model of archiving—one that privileges fluidity, translation, and the embodied act of remembering.

Conclusion

Ming Wong’s artistic practice collapses the boundaries between performance, archive, and identity. His work demonstrates how archiving can be an active, embodied process—one that resists the fixity of official histories and instead creates space for marginalized voices and alternative futures. Through the act of collecting, translating, and performing, Wong challenges conventional methods of preserving culture, offering a queered approach to cultural memory. His art not only archives the past but reanimates it, turning the archive into a living, breathing space of possibility.