Ming Wong
Lehre deutsch mit Petra von Kant / Teach German with Petra von Kant

single channel video (08:00), colour with stereo sound
2017
In 2007 just before moving to Berlin, I made Lerne Deutsch mit Petra von Kant / Learn German with Petra von Kant in which I tried to learn to speak and act like a German by closely emulating the actress Margit Carstensen in the role of fashion designer Petra von Kant, suffering a mid-life-career-crisis in Rainer Werner Fassbinder´s 1972 film Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant).
In the time since I moved to Berlin, Petra von Kant’s expressiveness has given me the words (and attitude!) I needed to overcome similar moments of despair and desperation. From what started as an exercise for a self-designed “integration course” in Germany – who would have guessed? – ten years later I would find myself in the role of a professor at UdK, the University of the Arts in Berlin.
I invited ten of my students to make this work with me to commemorate ten (mostly) productive years of German integration. A broad spectrum of young artists in Berlin, some of whom were as new to the city as I had been in 2007, collectively transformed into this new and restlessly changing figure of Petra von Kant of the new millenium.

Ming Wong (1971, Singapore) is an artist working with cinema and popular culture to consider the construction, reproduction, and circulation of identity. Wong represented Singapore at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 with the solo presentation Life of Imitation, which was awarded a Special Mention. He has had solo exhibitions at leading institutions worldwide, including UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo; Singapore Art Museum; REDCAT, Los Angeles; and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Wong has been included in numerous international biennials, including the Venice Biennale; Performa, New York; Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; Sydney Biennial; Shanghai Biennale; Lyon Biennale; and the Liverpool Biennial. He lives in Berlin.