[BRIEF NOTE] A Uchronical Possibility

[rfmcdonald]

[C]onsider one of the most striking, original works on show at last year’s Venice Biennale, by the Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong. Wong presented an installation in which the world economy was reimagined with the Third World on top and the First World at its beck and call. He had constructed the living room of an imaginary Austrian "guest worker" who had migrated to do the dirty work in a wealthy, hegemonic Malaysia. Sitting in the Austro-Muslim living room—deer antlers mix with crescent moons; gemütlichkeit meets the Koran—we watch the worker’s television, and see a mockumentary about the plight of his fellow Western migrants, complete with commentary by a professor from an imaginary "Kuala Lumpur School of Occidental and European Studies."

-- from "Cross Border Shopping," by Blake Gopnik, page 91 of the July/August 2004 issue of The Walrus, on the Havana Biennial