On 'Otherness'

Excerpt that really struck me from the keynote speech of performance artist Ping Chong at the NPN in Tampa.

"Looking back on my own work I see that the themes and motifs have been
remarkably consistent. My earliest work dealt with issues arising from the fact that I am an immigrant. It reflects the sense of alienation I felt toward the dominant culture and at the same time the estrangement I felt from my own culture as I acculturated. What it is to be Other, to be the perceived outsider has been my dominant theme. It is no surprise that my first work was about Lazarus, a man whose experience of returning from the dead would forever separate him from the living. But the theme of Otherness which began as a personal expression of anguish and alienation, that sense of belonging and not belonging, limited in its scope and reach, over time expanded into something bigger and more universal. Because if we were to elaborate on this theme we would come to realize that we are talking about something that has plagued humankind down the centuries which is exclusion vs. inclusion, empowerment vs. disempowerment, justice vs. injustice, equality vs. inequality. The macrocosm became the microcosm in my work. I am grateful for this elaboration because it connected me to the world when I was disconnected and took me out of myself and into the world. It made me realize that I had a duty and a responsibility toward others in the world. It made me hate exclusion. It made me an empathetic human being. I have been Other in different ways all my life, as an artist in American society, as a person of color, as an artist of color, as an immigrant: in all kinds of ways. It’s the position that fate has allotted me, the fate of the outsider, but it’s a valuable position to be in, because I think every society should have a mirror held to it by the artist/outsider. And curiously being Other has brought me closer to my humanity. "