LIFE AND DEATH IN VENICE /
LEBEN UND TOD IN VENEDIG /
VITA E MORTE A VENEZIA
3 channel video installation
16:08 mins loop
2010
Ming Wong’s 3-screen video installation is a revisitation of Death in Venice – Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film version of Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella.
On opposite screens the artist performs the roles of both the ageing composer/writer Gustav von Aschenbach as well as Tadzio, the adolescent boy whose uncorrupted youth and beauty mirrors the older man’s state of crisis and impending death.
Entirely self-directed, produced and conceived whilst his presentation for the Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale was still on-going, the fi lm was shot in several original locations of the book/film as well as against appropriated backdrops of artworks in the Venice Biennale.
The ‘Adagietto’ from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no.5 – the theme tune of Visconti’s film – provides the soundtrack, via a flawed performance by the artist himself on piano.