Undesirable Elements/Chicago
The usual immigrant story is a jumble of fact and fantasy, a banal Audie Murphy epic revealing the national character, as each successful new American recounts a hero’s journey through capitalist initiation. The impoverished immigrant arrives, works hard, learns the language, buys a house, raises a family, and lives well, with the loyal gusto of the newly free. There are elements of truth to this story; flawed as our systems might be, we are a wealthy, democratic country. But this archetypal tale also homogenizes immigrants, reducing differences to ethnic foods and quaint native dress, trotted out for parades and block parties.
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Ping Chong’s ongoing series, Undesirable Elements, offers another kind of immigrant story. For six years this performance artist has traveled to various cities and towns, interviewed residents, and gathered a small cast to tell their tales. Editing and directing their experiences, he creates a collage designed to show the diversity simmering just below the surface of the melting pot. In Chicago he selected six storytellers. Some were born in the United States but most immigrated out of curiosity or necessity. Their narratives reveal a fascinating dual consciousness, the result of having two homes and feeling at home in neither one. In the discussion after the show, Chong argued that forcing immigrants to take on the role of the “other” creates stereotypes and blinds us to the people behind them; his ongoing title plays on the stigma attached to being different.
Undesirable Elements/Chicago is an intriguing cross between a simple public reading and a stark performance piece. Chong’s spare aesthetic works well, allowing his storytellers to claim their own comfort level within the ambiguous spectrum between being oneself and playing a character onstage. And although his political message about valuing diversity frames the show, Chong lets the stories take center stage in this carefully orchestrated oral history, designed to challenge the ridiculous notion that the only good American is a white, Christian American.
This story has been amended from its original form
