Making Chinatown

First presented at REDCAT Gallery in Los Angeles, 'Making Chinatown' is Ming Wong’s
response to the cinematic quality of the city’s neighbourhoods, and a reinterpretation of Roman Polanski’s classic 1974 film, ‘Chinatown’. Wong plays all the iconic characters from the original film, and re-enacts key scenes from ‘Chinatown’ against backdrops printed with stills from the film. The resulting videos are in turn projected onto the wooden screens they were filmed against, while the gallery is transformed into an immersive space resembling a studio backlot, emphasising its makeshift and malleable quality, and the artifice of cinematic production. Just as he deconstructs and lays bare the elements that lie behind the ‘making of’ a film, Wong disassembles constructions of identity, gender and location through his fluid inhabiting of multiple character roles, and his reinterpretation of a film noir classic about a place where – in the words of its protagonist – “you can’t always tell what’s going on”.

'Making Chinatown' is presented with support from Goethe-Institut Singapore