{"id":5148,"date":"2018-06-03T08:25:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T06:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/?p=5148"},"modified":"2020-10-20T15:45:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T13:45:27","slug":"dissident-dissonance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/society\/deprivation-of-freedom-of-speech\/dissident-dissonance\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissident dissonance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ai Weiwei\u2019s father, Ai Qing, was a recognized poet who was one of thousands of Chinese intellectuals persecuted during the first purge of intellectuals in the late 1950s1<\/a><\/sup> and then during the Cultural Revolution. Exiled for many years to the inhospitable regions of Heilongjiang and Xinjiang, Ai Qing is notably condemned to cleaning the public toilets. He is forbidden to write. Young Weiwei, born in 1957, is thus no stranger to humiliation. At 22 years old, in 1979, and with the Beijing Spring in full swing, he founds the Stars<\/em> collective together with about ten other artists. It is one of the first anti-establishment groups, ten years prior to the events at Tiananmen Square2<\/a><\/sup>. Stars stands for the idea that anyone can produce his or her own light, countering the communist ideology that claims only Mao Zedong\u2019s thinking can be the sole and unique source of light3<\/a><\/sup>. Ai Weiwei relocates to New York in 1982. There he lives as a young bohemian artist, working multiple odd jobs and encountering multiple kinds of people: \u201cI wanted to be on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the way to the airport, his mother asks him, \u201cWhat are you going to do there? \u2013 I am going home,\u201d he replies4<\/a><\/sup>. At the time, New York is the capital of glamor and artistic success. He reads The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)<\/em> by Andy Warhol (\u201cI loved that book5<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d) \u201cThen Jeff Koons and others came out with such a fresh approach. I still remember Koons\u2019 first show with all those basketballs in the fish tanks. It was just next door in my neighborhood, the East Village. And I liked that work so much, and the price was very low, $3,000 dollars or something. I was so fascinated by that6<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d The few pieces he makes at the time reflect this neo-Dada spirit: a coat hanger in the shape of Marcel Duchamp\u2019s profile (Hanging Man<\/em>, 1985), a pickaxe handle combined with a violin (Violin,<\/em> 1985), a pair of shoes grafted to one another (One Man Shoe<\/em>, 1987). He also acquires a compulsion for photography: \u201cI started to take a lot of photos, thousands of photos, mostly in black and white. I developed them ten years later. Taking photos is like breathing. It becomes a part of you7<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simple gestures<\/h2>\n

Ai Weiwei returns to Beijing in 1993 to be at the side of his dying father. He starts selling antiques and decides in 1994 to edit a publication-manifesto, the Black Cover Book<\/em>, followed by the equally manifesto-like publications White Cover Book<\/em> (1995) and Grey Cover book<\/em> (1997). These books are the first of their kind to draw an inventory of Chinese art from that era. Through their uncluttered form, with elegant graphics and layout, and so-called \u201cconceptual\u201d content, but also through their \u201cpromotional\u201d aspect, the books push Chinese art squarely into the realm of the contemporary, an esthetic category normally confined to the Western world. Together with investor Frank Uytterhaegen, he founds the Chinese Art Archives and Warehouse<\/em> in Beijing in 1998. Part private gallery, part public art center, it is a critical place for distributing contemporary Chinese works which are just starting to attract major collectors. At the forefront is Uli Sigg, former Swiss ambassador to China for whom Ai Weiwei becomes a principal advisor. In 1999, Ai Weiwei designs a new studio in the city of Caochangdi, not far from Beijing8<\/a><\/sup>. \u201c\u2026I walked into this village and asked the owner of the village if I could rent some land. He said, \u2018Yes we have land\u2019, so I said, \u2018Can I build something?\u2019 He said, \u2018Yes you can build.\u2019 It was illegal, but he didn\u2019t care9<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d In 2003, he creates his company FAKE Design which he uses to produce numerous art, architecture, interior design and urban landscaping projects, including about twenty studio\/residencies built next to his own, turning the neighborhood into a major attraction for galleries and artists10<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Parallel to this activity of directing a cultural-sector company, his personal artistic output starts to gain precision. He produces several pieces that are now considered icons of his esthetic vocabulary, such as the Coca-Cola logo painted on a series of ancient vases (Han Dynasty, 206 av. J-C – 220 ap. J-C, Urn With Coca-Cola logo paint<\/em>, 1994), wherein the lessons of New-York Pop are applied to a Made in China way of thinking. He takes a picture of his wife, Lu Qing, on Tiananmen Square lifting up her skirt underneath a giant portrait of Mao, with some on-duty soldiers nearby (June<\/em>, 1994). He also takes a picture of himself shattering an antique vase on the ground (Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn<\/em>, 1995) or giving the middle finger to Tiananmen Square on an empty, foggy day (Study of Perspective, Tiananmen Square<\/em>, 1995)11<\/a><\/sup>. These are simple gestures, not to say simplistic, yet in light of the Chinese political and cultural context, they are quickly seen by the art world as iconoclastic and symbolic forms made by an artist looking to emancipate himself from the ancient and current dogma of his country.<\/p>\n

On blogging and its effects<\/h2>\n

Ai Weiwei\u2019s next move is to specialize in recycling ancient materials, like the circular sculpture made of 42 bicycles typical of pre-modernized communist China (Forever<\/em>, 2003), or a forest of fake trees made out of wooden beams and pillars taken from dismantled Qing dynasty12<\/a><\/sup> temples (Fragments<\/em>, 2005). A few days into the twelfth documenta in Kassel, 2007, his outdoor installation (Template<\/em>, 2007) made of 1,001 wooden doors and windows from destroyed Ming and Qing dynasty (1368-1911) houses, collapses from a violent gust of wind. The artist decides to leave it that way for the rest of the event, leaving the ruins to follow their own destiny. Ai Weiwei also has 1,001 Chinese tourists invited for a week-long visit to that same event, each carrying the same suitcase so that they are transformed into living sculptures to be encountered throughout the city. The action is called Fairytale<\/em>. The public enjoys both the formal effectiveness of his installations and the narratives that accompany them.<\/p>\n

Ai Weiwei\u2019s work reaches a turning point in 2005 when he starts a blog. He takes great care to feed it non-stop, proudly declaring the following year that, \u201cMy blog is probably the most image-loaded blog internationally; nobody else puts up as many photos each day13<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d Aside from posting photos, the artist also brings up his architectural or urbanism projects, his daily life, and international or local current affairs. It becomes the venue for his comments on the ethnic tensions opposing the Han and Tibetans in March 2008, followed by the Han and Uyghours in July 2009, as well as on the causes behind the assassination of six police officers in Shanghai on July 1, 2008, by Yang Jia, a young man apparently exasperated by the muscular custody officer in the police precinct where the agents worked14<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

From earthquake to arrest<\/h2>\n

The earthquake in Sichuan on May 12, 2008 presents an opportunity for him to wage his own battle of Hernani. Moved by the deaths of thousands of children in \u201ctofu schools15<\/a><\/sup>\u201d, shoddily constructed by local authorities guilty of negligence and corruption, he launches a website to report the body count. He enlists dozens of volunteers to investigate throughout the region and collect people\u2019s stories16<\/a><\/sup>. But the investigations collide with the disinformation being spread by local authorities and by a thorough police beating in August 2009 that lands him an operation for skull trauma. The same year, he makes an installation for the facade of Haus der Kunst in Munich using 9,000 backpacks resembling those worn by the young victims, forming an immense banner quoting, from the mouth of one mother: \u201cFor seven years she lived happily on this earth\u201d (Remembering<\/em>, 2009).<\/p>\n

Tensions escalate between Ai Weiwei and the Chinese authorities. On November 2, 2010, technical agents from the State deliberately destroy his studio in Shanghai. At a banquet five days later, the artist offers ten thousand river crabs to all the people that have supported him in his views. The Chinese pronunciation of \u201criver crab\u201d is homonymous with the term \u201charmony\u201d, a keyword in communist propaganda. Internet users adopt the word for this tiny crustacean with irony as a metaphor for censorship. In December, he makes a list of all the victims of a mysterious fire in Shanghai. On December 3, police agents prevent him from leaving for Oslo, where he planned to attend the award ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize, being awarded to Liu Xiaobo17<\/a><\/sup>. Ai Weiwei is finally arrested the following April 3 as he is about to embark a plane for Taipei via Hong Kong. Eight of his assistants join him in custody, which lasts 81 days.<\/p>\n

He is released on bail on June 22. The authorities demand he pay 15 million yuan, equivalent to 1.7 million euros, accusing him of fiscal fraud, pornography (for his naked self-portraits accompanied by several women18<\/a><\/sup>) and bigamy (his recent child was born from an extra-conjugal relationship). The sentence is confirmed in September 2012. In the span of a few months, Ai Weiwei receives 9 million yuan from a variety of supporters. He is under house arrest. The case makes noise all around the world19<\/a><\/sup>. Ai Weiwei later declares, \u201cI didn\u2019t pay much attention because for a long time I know that normally they wouldn\u2019t touch me20<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Official blogger and advisor<\/h2>\n

This grants him the status of dissident, turning the artist into a hero of the fight against his country\u2019s inflexible authority. His pieces and actions are undeniably effective; there\u2019s no doubt that their ability to make a show out of political hyperbole are a factor in destabilizing Chinese authorities. But trouble is, one gets the impression that the artist is going for a game of cat and mouse with said powers. In effect, Ai Weiwei\u2019s blog takes up an offer from the very official Internet portal www.sina.com, which belongs to Sina Corp, one of the principle artisans of State propaganda.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Ai Weiwei does not hesitate to say this about the blog: \u201cI find that this is the most interesting gift to me, or even to China\u202621<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d He makes this statement on October 13, 2008, while also denouncing authorities in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake and the Yang Jia case. Is Ai Weiwei being ironic or does he truly believe he can escape censorship by seeking protection from Sina Corp? Regardless, the blog is shut down in spring 2009.<\/p>\n

Ai Weiwei also briefly serves as a primary advisor on the construction of the Beijing national stadium, the famous \u201cBird\u2019s Nest\u201d by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron22<\/a><\/sup>. He abandons the project a few months before its inauguration out of fear of ideological misrepresentation. But how could he imagine for a second that a building project of this kind, one that would become the beacon of the Olympic Games, could be conceived without any ideology in a country where propaganda controls everything? His return to lucidity does not prevent him from building his studio in Shangai (nearly 2000 m\u00b2 in size) in early 2008 upon invitation from local authorities looking to develop \u2013 in the same spirit as Coachangdi \u2013 a cultural neighborhood within a new housing zone. By twist of fate, the studio was destroyed under the pretext of illegal construction.<\/p>\n

Luxury homes, the desert, speculation<\/h2>\n

The most disturbing moment in this game is undoubtedly the Ordos 100 project, launched in 2006 by Cai Jian, the self-proclaimed \u201cdirect descendant of Genghis Khan\u201d. Once a farmer and then the largest owner of real estate, he became a multimillionaire thanks to the yogurt industry, and is a close friend of Hu Jintao, President of the Republic at the time and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. The pharaonic project was intended to create a residential neighborhood in the Kangbashi municipality, not far from the city Ordos, in the heart of Inner Mongolia. The specifications called for each house to have a surface area of 1,000 m2 and an indoor pool, each sold at a fixed price of 1.5 million dollars. The very same Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are invited by Cai Jian to design the operation. The architects delegate the project coordination to Ai Weiwei, who comes up with the idea of inviting one hundred architects from all over the world to build \u201can interesting and heterogeneous collection of buildings, something quite unique in China,\u201d in the artist\u2019s own words23<\/a><\/sup>. Not a single Chinese architect is selected. Once again, a project of this magnitude would never see the light of day without the blessing of the authorities. Ai Weiwei confirms it himself: \u201cIt is very important that the government, who financed this project, did something to show that society doesn\u2019t have to be all the same all the time24<\/a><\/sup>. [\u2026] In the end, the municipal authority\u2019s strategy was very enlightened, because by allowing this collaboration to go ahead they have attracted a lot of national and international attention to the city. The price of land in the neighbourhood of the park, which until a few years ago was used for agriculture, has risen a lot. A lot of people from universities, journalists, and architects have already come to visit the site,\u201d he declares on September 12, 200625<\/a><\/sup>. Here he goes well beyond administrative and political acquiescence; he demonstrates undeniable complicity with the established power by viewing the economy as something wild and voracious that erects new cities in record time to satisfy the needs of unbridled growth. According to Ai Weiwei, the project would be over in a year and a half. \u201cFor China, a year and a half is an eternity. We had planned to be finished in fourth months26<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d These remarks, made in 2008, are strange considering how it seems that construction only just begun. The only remnants of these luxury villas today are a few carcasses lost in a desert of sand27<\/a><\/sup>. Cai Jian abandoned the project after realizing it wouldn\u2019t generate profits. And anyway, starting in 2008-2009, Ai Weiwei was one again someone to avoid, in the eyes of the authorities.<\/p>\n

100 million seeds<\/h2>\n

This propensity for excess is visible in Ai Weiwei\u2019s pieces. His installation in 2007 using 1,001 ancient chairs 28<\/a><\/sup> (Fairytale Chairs<\/em>) was already tending toward the monumental. That same year, he abandons Chinese Pop to tackle Vladimir Tatline\u2019s Monument to the Third International as a symbol of a past in which \u201cmany things stayed utopian rather than becoming a reality29<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d The piece imposes in every sense of the word (Fountain of Light<\/em>). The 42 bicycles from 2003 (Forever<\/em>) become 1,200 in 2011, as gleaming as they are perfectly aligned one next to the other, stacked, saturating the space30<\/a><\/sup>. Three years later, he reuses the assemblage of bicycles to create a colossal chandelier (Stacked, 2014<\/em>). But it is with Sunflower Seeds<\/em> in 2010 that the gigantism reaches its definitive architectonic value. Conceived for the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London \u2013 the ultimate temple to artistic excess \u2013 the installation comprises ten tons of porcelain sunflower seeds, roughly 100 million in total. With them, Ai Weiwei references a Mao Zedong metaphor in which the people are meant to turn to him \u201cas sunflowers turn to the sun\u201d. The project is financed in large part by the agro-industrial giant Unilever. For more than a year, 1 600 workers are busy producing the seeds in workshops at Jingdezhen (Jiangxi province), a city reputed for the quality of its ceramics, but marked by a crisis in industrial development.<\/p>\n

It is considered an act of \u201cempathetic solidarity\u201d for \u201cthe economic survival of a manual skill in decline\u201d. And yet three years later, Ai Weiwei tells journalist Pierre Haski, writing for Rue 89<\/em>: \u201cChina was only able to develop by taking advantage of the results of Western civilization. It copied, and then became a country of cheap manual labor to manufacture products that the West no longer wants to make because it\u2019s bad for the environment or because it costs too much. The West today is living off the Chinese tragedy, and if China isn\u2019t aware of that, it\u2019s out of stupidity!\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick and viral<\/h2>\n

Directly after his release, Ai Weiwei increases his online presence not through his blog but on Twitter, namely by using VPN (virtual private network) technology to counter any censors. The information is immediate and even more viral. Texts limited to 140 characters are inherently more enigmatic31<\/a><\/sup>. Ai Weiwei no longer has the time for deep investigations: he gives his opinion on bits of everything and positions himself as the herald of freedom of expression, for example by siding with the Arab Spring. This daily campaign (a hundred tweets a day and nearly 75,000 followers daily in 2012) occurs side by side with the massive publication of his photos. \u201cI\u2019m not really interested in photography and I don\u2019t really care about the subject of my photos32<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s just happy making a lot of them,\u201d adds Carol Yinghua Lu in an article written about the subject33<\/a><\/sup>. Ai Weiwei takes it even further: \u201cPhotography is a deceitful and dangerous medium […]. It neither records nor expresses reality. It sucks authenticity out of the reality it represents and only separates it even further from that reality34<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d This unequivocal stance comes at the height of his intense use of photography, not only in his activist web projects, but also in his artistic production. He even goes as far as to accept that four institutions organize a retrospective of his photographic works in 2011 and 2012. As emphasized by journalist Jed Perl in an article dated February 201335<\/a><\/sup>, these exhibitions have the merit of showing the extent to which his photographs are stripped of all esthetic concerns, aside perhaps from producing messages that can be summarized in a tweet36<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

The logic of propaganda<\/h2>\n

Ai Weiwei is under house arrest until July 22, 2015, by Chinese authorities who have accused him of crimes and hope to sentence him. He is thus forbidden from leaving the country for four years. And yet his works are present in numerous international events. It all culminates at the Venice Biennale 2013, where he is not only showing in a group exhibition at one of the city palaces, but also occupies the German Pavilion37<\/a><\/sup> with a sculpture made of 886 entangled Qing dynasty stools (Bang,<\/em> 2013) and rents out a church for an installation reenacting the conditions of his 81 days in detention (S.A.C.R.E.D.<\/em>, 2011-2013). There are several actors in the piece, including one who plays him. The actor is flanked from evening till morning by two guards who follow him to the most intimate recesses of his cell. It is deliberately staged for maximum theatricality; the visitor is made to feel self-conscious both at the sight of the artist\u2019s humiliation as at the voyeurism of the play and its mockery of the truth.<\/p>\n

That same year, 2013, the daily British paper The Guardian<\/em> asks: \u201cIs Ai Weiwei still an artist?\u201d A few weeks after being released38<\/a><\/sup>, Ai Weiwei declares, \u201cI consider all of this to be my artwork.\u201d And he adds: \u201cArt must be a tool that allows information to circulate39<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d Artworks and life acts merge to form a single medium, pushing a return to the propagandist logic of the 20th<\/sup> century avant-garde, futurism and Dada in particular, and of the totalitarian regimes whose mechanisms Ai Weiwei learned to master at a young age, when aphorisms from Mao\u2019s Little Red Book were beaten into his head40<\/a><\/sup>. In this spirit, he launches, a veritable smear campaign against the Lego company in autumn 2015, for refusing sell him enough bricks for an installation planned at the Melbourne Museum in Australia. The company simply argued that it \u201cdoes not support political projects.\u201d Which is absurd considering that a year earlier, it helped the artist with an exhibition at Alcatraz in the USA. Upon discovering that Lego is collaborating with Chinese authorities on the construction of an amusement park in Shanghai, Ai Weiwei accuses the company of taking sides. He launches a crowdfunding campaign for Legos, and after a few days, announces that he gathered enough for his project. Twitter takes care of the rest. On social media, Lego is the target of thousands of spiteful comments. The company issues an apology and promises never to do it again.<\/p>\n

One-way ethics<\/h2>\n

Again, Ai Weiwei\u2019s proves his activism is effective. But why not be as uncompromising with the companies that support him? Unilever, for example, is regularly attacked on the Internet for paying low wages to its workers or for buying up agricultural lands in the poorest countries for next to nothing. When in early 2016, he shows his work in Paris at Bon March\u00e9, the prestigious department store belonging to LVMH group, he seems to forget that China plays an essential role in the seamless (and shameless) growth of the luxury goods industry. Finally, and above all, Ai Weiwei has neglected to think about the consequences of his partnership with the capricious Cai Jian, who himself encompasses the troubling and most impudent symptoms of commercialism.<\/p>\n

These shape-shifting ethics can certainly be justified by Ai Weiwei\u2019s dependence on unconditional support from the art world\u2026 and its economics. Museums, art centers, foundations, donors, galleries and the art market in general, they all function as a sprawling amplifier and assembly line for an array of attitudes and projects. Since his detention in 2011, the year that Art Review magazine named him at the top of their Power Art List<\/em>41<\/a><\/sup>, the artist has turned into a star whose activity has taken a frenzied pace. Very little commentary is made on his way of thinking and producing.<\/p>\n

The interviews between him and Hans Ulrich Obrist reveal how the latter is in total fascination of the former. Although Obrist often brings up the artist\u2019s architecture, design or urbanism projects in China, he never once asks the artist about his relationship to the Chinese powers that be. When the occasional article proves to be critical, such as C\u00e9dric Aurelle\u2019s piece for journal 02 (spring 2016, #77), the artist prohibits them from using any photos of his work42<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

A clear conscience and symbolic hypertrophy<\/h2>\n

Of course it is difficult to criticize an artist for having convictions and defending honorable causes. Ai Weiwei\u2019s battles are all the more heroic in that he often puts his own liberty and even his health on the line in order to win them. Few contemporary artists can claim such commitment. Clearly his communication tools (notably the Internet and social media) are the most effective ways for him to oppose the massive ideological and political steamroller that is the Chinese government: and so he fights propaganda with propaganda. His growing fame is an incredible vector for communicating against a state machine endowed with formidable oppressive strength43<\/a><\/sup>. And yet, we still have the impression that Ai Weiwei is increasingly blinded by his determination, or rather, by his success. This blindness prevents him from seeing that the Power Art World<\/em> of which he is now a part is exploiting him to buy back their clear conscience, and that for the most part, the real heads of the art-world family are hardly aware of the problems in Chinese society or in any society for that matter, because they live in a speculative bubble, far away from reality.<\/p>\n

Big and small compromises with the art world aside, his other blind spot resides in the symbolic hypertrophy of his messages, delivered with more and more frequency. The photograph on the beach of Lesbos is the best example: the small lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi is replaced by the fully alive, corporeal mass of Ai Weiwei. The spontaneous poignancy of a picture taken without artifice clashes with over-the-top staging. As a fine connoisseur of art history, Ai Weiwei know that dramatic representation is not so easy. Similarly, when he wraps the columns of the Konzerthaus Berlin in 14,000 life vests collected from the Mediterranean shores, and then asks guests to wear a similar kind of vest for a gala evening, is he not giving in to the bid for gestures and signs that ultimately stifle the content of his struggles? In September 2015, he participates with British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor in an over-mediatized solidarity march for refugees, a \u201cwalk in empathy44<\/a><\/sup>\u201d in London, like two prophets wrapped in a blanket. Does he not realize that by drawing attention to his stage presence, he is detracting from the essentials, that is, the battles and causes he is there to defend?<\/p>\n

The opposite version of Huineng<\/h2>\n

In the end, Ai Weiwei himself has brought these antagonisms into this adventure. An adventure that started in the meanderings of a Cultural Revolution that continues, fifty years in, to weigh heavily on Chinese society. In those somber years, he learned to resist everything and to adapt his positions according to the succession of people and contexts45<\/a><\/sup>. His experience in New York taught him the mechanics of artistic success, amongst other things, and the economic and media strategies required46<\/a><\/sup>. By reading Andy Warhol, his apprenticeship in self-control and self-image is complete. \u201cI always take action when it\u2019s needed47<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d He grants himself the status of a conceptual artist, distant and sparing, like his much-admired Marcel Duchamp48<\/a><\/sup>, and yet also reveals himself as a tireless producer for whom \u201ctheory always come later49<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d \u201cWe are a productive reality,\u201d he states50<\/a><\/sup>. Quote as he may the master of absurdist Zen thinking, Huineng, he often takes the ancient monk\u2019s word too literally. Indeed, he gave his architecture and design agency FAKE the minimal slogan: \u201cMake It Simple!\u201d while continuing to develop grandiose, if not some outright pompous, projects. \u201cHe is a lover of paradox,\u201d writes journalist Barnaby Martin51<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Contrary to countless other dissidents who were, for the most part, imprisoned for years, or even just plainly disappeared; Ai Weiwei has not been reduced to silence. He chalks this relative clemency up to his popularity. Wen Jiabao, then Prime Minister, was afraid of how Western leaders would react during his visits to Germany and Great Britain in the summer of 201152<\/a><\/sup>. And so Ai Weiwei does not fit the profile of an isolated and solitary dissident. He is bulimic and hungry to occupy every territory, all the time. \u201cMy favorite word? It\u2019s \u2018act\u201953<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d He cultivates multiple networks throughout the planet. Perhaps this is why he thought himself \u201cuntouchable54<\/a><\/sup>\u201d at the time of his arrest.<\/p>\n

He considers himself the sworn opponent of many injustices55<\/a><\/sup>, but shows himself incapable of critical distance from an art world that is itself prone to its own downward spiral. He has in fact become the star he dreamed of becoming in 1979, within a group of the same name, an influential source of light that turns away from the unique thinking of the Great Helmsman. Yet although his celebrity helps carry his voice, it also imposes a hyper-presence that is incompatible with any analytic evaluation of his own actions56<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

While waiting for a new language<\/h2>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure, once somebody looks at my blog, they start looking at the world differently without even knowing it. This is why the Communists, from the beginning, really censored everything. They are the sole source of propaganda, and have been very successful at it for the last fifty years. But because of China\u2019s opening, and because of the economy of the world, they won\u2019t survive. They can\u2019t survive, so they have to allow a certain amount of freedom, but this cannot be controlled once it is allowed57<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d This prophecy from 2006 has yet to come true, even if everyone believes that the authorities\u2019 stronghold on personal freedoms will one day come to an end. As long as there is positive economic growth, the Communist power can continue to claim that their program and methods are necessary58<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

In her film on Ai Weiwei, Never Sorry<\/em>, American director Alison Klayman asks herself if in 2012 the artist will change the course of his country59<\/a><\/sup>. She forgets that the only way for an artist to change society is to invent a new form of art, a new language. This is the lesson of the twentieth century artistic avant-garde, in any case, and Ai Weiwei has learned his lessons perfectly. Does he not declare that, \u201cany type of revolution in art or literature or in reality is always about how many new concepts are being introduced. And the words are the basis of that. The new vocabulary is the most essential thing60<\/a><\/sup>.\u201d And yet, up till now, the artist Ai Weiwei hasn\u2019t invented anything; he has been happy to utilize the rather classical formulas of twentieth-century art, to which he adds a social dimension, much like German artist Joseph Beuys in his day61<\/a><\/sup>. The only difference lies in his heavy use of new communication technology to get the messages behind his work and his actions out to the largest possible public.<\/p>\n

Ai Weiwei seems above all not to realize that his work is produced in a veritable climate of competing forms and media, perfectly echoing a Chinese approach to economics characterized by relentless expansion. Even the subjects he addresses in many of his pieces, with the continuous recycling of materials thought to represent the brutality with which China has erased its own (even recent) history, end up identifying with the structural and ideological dialectics of his country. And so Ai Weiwei embodies better than anyone the complexity of contemporary China, an entire country immersed since the early 1980s in a double bind of the State, torn between the utmost directive communist ideologies and an ultra-liberal economy where unfettered individualism has taken on a quasi-religious dimension.\u201dLike one of the Furies of Greek myth, he is both the child and the nemesis of the current order,\u201d writes journalist Barnaby Martin, despite everything a fervent admirer of the artist62<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

 <\/div>\n

Translation by Maya Dalinsky<\/b>
\nThanks to C\u00e9dric Aurelle<\/b><\/p>\n

Cover image: Portrait of Ai Weiwei, plastic LEGO, single panel, 2014, Courtesy of FOR-SITE Foundation, San Francisco.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ai Weiwei\u2019s father, Ai Qing, was a recognized poet who was one of thousands of Chinese intellectuals persecuted during the first purge of intellectuals in the late 1950s1 and then during the Cultural Revolution. Exiled for many years to the inhospitable regions of Heilongjiang and Xinjiang, Ai Qing is notably condemned to cleaning the public toilets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101027,"featured_media":5146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1847],"tags":[1853],"corpus":[],"post_types":[1206],"associate_editors":[699],"authors":[1282],"class_list":["post-5148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-deprivation-of-freedom-of-speech","post_types-investigation-2-en","associate_editors-prializart","authors-eric-mangion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"corpus","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corpus?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"post_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_types?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"associate_editors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/associate_editors?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=5148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}