Haus Der Kunst - on the occasion of ai weiwei

on the occasion of ai weiwei:
art, dissidence and resistance
panel discussion in english
27 jul 11 / wed 7 p.m.
western countries are demanding a transparent trial according to constitutional standards for the artist ai weiwei and other artists, authors and dissidents who are still imprisoned. the chinese foreign ministry, for its part insists on the sovereignty of china’s judicial system. can the gap between such contradictory positions be bridged? the panel at the haus der kunst will be discussing the case of ai weiwei – not as an isolated phenomenon, however, but rather as part of the geopolitical developments of the past few years. this, however, raises the question of the credibility of the western-oriented, international art system: on the one hand it demands universal freedom of opinion, and supports dissident artists through petitions, protests and calls for their release. on the other hand, has it not engaged in some complicity with autocratic systems? isn't tacit tolerance of the ruling, despotic elite in the country implicit in events like the sharjah biennial.
the Chinese artist ai weiwei, whose exhibition "so sorry" was shown by the haus der kunst in 2009/10, was arrested on 3 april 2011. chinese authorities alleged "economic crimes" as the reason for his arrest, but no evidence has been offered to date to support the charge. ever since his release on 22 june, the artist has been under house arrest, is prohibited from using the internet and from giving long interviews, and may not leave Beijing for a year.

with hou hanru (san francisco art institute), gao minglu (university of pittsburgh), shi ming (deutsche welle tv), flora sapio (Centre for Advanced Studies on Contemporary China, Turin) and ulrich wilmes (senior curator at the haus der kunst)
moderation: okwui enwezor (director of the haus der kunst as of 10/2011)


hou hanru studied art history in beijing. today he is a professor at the san francisco art institute. in 2007 he curated the 10th international Istanbul biennial and has published in flash art international and art monthly.

gao minglu studied art history in beijing and Cambridge. in 1998 he curated the first comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Chinese art in the usa ("inside/out: new Chinese art”). he teaches history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh.

shi ming studied german and law in beijing, worked for many years as a journalist with radio china and has been with the chinese service of radio deutsche welle since 2002.

Flora Sapio received her PhD in Chinese Studies in 2004. She worked at the Centre for East and South East Asian Studies at Lund University, Sweden, and is now a research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies on Contemporary China, Turin, and a visiting professor at the Julius-Maximilian University in Würzburg, Germany. Her main research interests are, a.o., criminal justice, administrative detention and extra-judicial violence. She is one of the founding members of the European China Law Studies Association.

ulrich wilmes began his career in 1988 as head of exhibitions at the portikus in Frankfurt/main. after holding a variety of posts, notably at the lenbachhaus in Munich and the museum ludwig in cologne, he became senior curator at the haus der kunst in 2008.

okwui enwezor was the artistic director of numerous large-scale exhibitions, notably the documenta 11 in kassel (1998–2002). throughout his career, he has worked hard to shift the international art business away from its fixation on the euro-american context. at the present time, he is the artistic director of meeting points 6, a project for performance and the visual arts in eight cities (Beirut, amman, Damascus, cairo, tunis, tangiers, brussels and berlin). on october 1, 2011, he will become the new director of the haus der kunst.

piccadilly community center

Piccadilly Community Centre: Broken Britain invades Westminster

Compared to Elmgreen & Dragset, Büchel is literal-minded. But Piccadilly Community Centre is nevertheless impressively discombobulating. I have no idea how much it cost, and it clearly gives something to locals and other visitors who take it at face value. So what is this? Installation art? Community art? A tableau-vivant? Or a kind of immersive theatre in which we are the unwitting actors? Is it art – or life just tweaked a bit? All of the above. See you at the tea dance.Read further
And more...

Why Ai Weiwei Was Let Go

China Real Time Report

Russell Leigh Moses is a Beijing-based analyst and professor who writes on Chinese politics. He is writing a book on the changing role of power in the Chinese political system.


The release of Ai Weiwei after 11 weeks of detention is clearly good news for those urging his freedom, even if the condition of his release is to stay quiet. But the sudden reappearance of the artist raises as many questions as it answers, chief among them: Why?
The easy answer is that Ai was released because the Chinese government succumbed to international pressure and global outrage.
But the real explanation lies elsewhere, in Chinese domestic politics. Ai’s incarceration was a direct expression of the battle being waged in Beijing over who gets to rule the country in the coming years.
The narrative in much of the West is that Ai Weiwei was detained because he was a critic of the Chinese government. International human rights organizations insist that this was one of those cases where the international community successfully stood up to Beijing, and that Ai’s freedom was due in direct measure to the force of global opinion. They point to museums and exhibitors who signed letters and staged exhibitions, and the continued complaints by officials interacting with their Chinese counterparts and raising Ai’s case as an irritant in relations with Beijing.
But while Ai found some measure of freedom, a number of his associates remain in custody or under surveillance. Nor was there any amnesty announced for other detainees currently under investigation. Silence about those cases should be no surprise, for Beijing has shown itself to be unconcerned about polishing its international image. Where international pressure is concerned—be it for revaluation of the yuan or efforts to ease tensions in the South China Sea—Chinese officials far prefer looking tough to acting tentatively.
Ai might have a high profile in some parts, but he is a minor casualty on the larger battleground of Chinese politics. That war continues, with no clear victor in sight. Will it be the Right wing of the Communist Party, with their ideas of political reform and legal protections for citizens who wish to assist the government by being part of the loyal opposition? Will it be the Leftists, who favor a retreat to socialist values, even if takes mass movements and nostalgia to arrive there? Or will it be the current leadership in the Middle, which thinks that the society has to be supervised and–largely unafraid of what the world thinks–often happiest when foreigners complain?
Ai likely lost his freedom because he forgot that all the social media in China and the world could not protect him from being knocked about. And he probably got it back because the hardliners that fight a hundred battles every day to secure stability impressed upon him that very fact.

• Ai Weiwei,
• Communist Party,
• Dissidents,
• Expert Contributor,
• Russell Leigh Moses

Beijing Releases Detained Artist

Ai Weiwei 'Confessed,' Will Pay Back Taxes, Official News Agency Says; a Yearlong Ban on Tweets, Speaking to Media

By JEREMY PAGE

Chinese authorities have released on bail Ai Weiwei and imposed a media ban on the artist. The U.S. Federal Reserve downgraded its assessment of the U.S. economy, which could impact the flow of capital in Asia. WSJ's Jake Lee and Peter Stein discuss.

BEIJING—Ai Weiwei, China's most famous contemporary artist, says Chinese authorities released him on bail on the condition that he stop speaking to the media, including through Twitter, for at least a year.
China's state-run Xinhua news agency said Mr. Ai was released Wednesday night because he "confessed" his alleged crimes, agreed to pay back taxes he was accused of evading, and was suffering from a "chronic disease."
Mr. Ai said his health was fine and thanked reporters for their support as he returned to his studio late Wednesday with his mother and his wife, according to witnesses. He added that he wasn't able to say more under the conditions of his bail.
"I can't say much. I can say I'm out. I'm on bail. But I can't say anything more under the conditions of my release," he told The Wall Street Journal by telephone.
Asked how long the media ban was in place, Mr. Ai said: "One year, at least."

View Full Image

Reuters

Ai Weiwei waves from his Beijing studio after his release. Family members said China never officially informed them of his detention.

He also confirmed that the ban applied to social media such as Twitter, on which he has a following of more than 88,000. Mr. Ai used to send dozens of tweets daily, many of them criticizing the Chinese government, until his detention in April.
Mr. Ai's unexpected release appeared to be designed to curtail widespread international criticism, but left many questions unanswered about his 11 weeks in extrajudicial detention and his future as an artist and activist.
His release came two days before Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is due to begin a trip to Europe that includes Britain and Germany, two countries whose governments and artistic communities had been particularly outspoken in calling for Mr. Ai's immediate release.

Read More

• China Real Time: Why Ai Was Let Go
• Opinion: The House Prisons of Beijing

The move was greeted with cautious optimism.
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she welcomed the release, but he said that it is only a first step and that the accusations against Mr. Ai have to be resolved in a transparent fashion by the judicial system.
Mark Toner, a U.S. State Department deputy spokesman, said, "It's always a good thing when an individual who is only in prison for exercising [his] internationally recognized human rights is released."
"But there's obviously more individuals who are being held who we want to see emerge," Mr. Toner added.
The media ban on Mr. Ai suggests that China's increasingly powerful security apparatus is determined to silence prominent critics of the Communist Party, especially online, to ensure stability in the run-up to its 90th anniversary on July 1, and to a once-a-decade leadership change next year.

Outspoken Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei released by government authorities after nearly three months of detainment. Video and image courtesy of Reuters.

Mr. Ai, who helped to design the iconic Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but who later emerged as one of the government's most vocal critics, was detained on April 3 as he tried to board a flight to Hong Kong at Beijing's international airport.
He was the highest-profile of several dozen dissidents—including many of China's leading human-rights lawyers—who have been extrajudicially detained since appeals for a "Jasmine revolution" in China began circulating online in mid-February.
Mr. Ai, 54 years old, had been thought for a long time to be immune from such treatment because his late father, Ai Qing, was one of Communist China's most famous poets, whose works have often been quoted by Chinese leaders, including Premier Wen.
Mr. Ai's family members say Chinese authorities never officially informed them that he had been detained and never detailed the charges against him, in what many legal experts describe as a deliberate violation of judicial procedure designed to intimidate other government critics.
Lu Qing, his wife, was allowed a 15-minute meeting with her husband at an undisclosed location near Beijing last month. After the meeting, she said he appeared to be well-cared-for and wasn't being held in an official prison.
State media and some Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that Mr. Ai's case is political. They say he was being investigated for economic crimes that included evading taxes through a company that handled his work, and for illegally destroying documents.
Xinhua said on Wednesday that Mr. Ai "has been released on bail because of his good attitude in confessing his crimes as well as a chronic disease he suffers from." It didn't elaborate on the illness.
Relatives say Mr. Ai suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes.
"The decision comes also in consideration of the fact that Ai has repeatedly said he is willing to pay the taxes evaded," the report quoted Beijing police as saying.
It also quoted the police as saying that Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., a company Xinhua said Mr. Ai controlled, was found to have evaded a "huge amount of taxes" and to have intentionally destroyed accounting documents.
Mr. Ai's relatives have denied those charges, and have said that the company in question is registered in the name of his wife.
Several of Mr. Ai's work colleagues were also detained when he was taken into custody and over the next few days. There was no immediate word on their fate.
Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com

Dissident Chinese Artist Is Released

 

NY Times

David Gray/Reuters

The artist Ai Weiwei speaking to reporters at his Beijing studio early Thursday. “In legal terms, I'm — how do you say? — on bail. So I cannot give any interviews,” he said. “But I'm fine.”

By EDWARD WONG 

Published: June 22, 2011 

Release Ai Weiwei

An Artist Takes Role of China’s Conscience

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who disappeared into police custody in Beijing after he was detained on Sunday while trying to board a flight for Hong Kong, is a fully 21st-century figure, global-minded, media-savvy, widely networked. He is also the embodiment of a cultural type, largely unfamiliar to the West, that dates far back into China’s ancient past.

Ai Weiwei's Path From Cultural Prankster to Enemy of the State

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37421/ai-weiweis-path-from-cultural-prankster-to-enemy-of-the-state/

It takes a government as lawless and paranoid as China's to give an artist the kind of popular relevance that Ai Weiwei now has. The detention of Ai — we still don't know his whereabouts, though authorities have issued a one-sentence statement that they are investigating him for "economic crimes" — has become an international cause célèbre, splashed across news channels and sparking high-profile diplomatic reactions.

Of course, there is something exotic about this story that feeds the furor. In our neck of the woods, artists — even very political artists — are tolerated as either Cassandras or clowns. Art in general functions as a zone of imagined freedom, whose outsize, libertine character is in exact inverse proportion to any consequences that it might have for the artist.

mr. BIG

Mr. Big

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/mr_big/

Exactly how influential is Ai Weiwei? If numbers are any indication, at the time of writing this in April, 2008, Ai’s blog, which alongside a journal of his everyday activities contains occasional interviews and curatorial commentaries, had registered well over four million hits since he started it in November 2005. This figure is rivalled only by the number of visitors to Xu Jinglei’s blog, one of the most popular young movie stars and directors in China. Reading Ai’s blog has become something of a ritual for many who read Mandarin, particularly those working in the art world, as a means of keeping track of the national and international artists, curators, critics, journalists, celebrities and others who make it a must to visit Ai’s studio while they’re in town, and to keep up to date with his latest art works, exhibitions, friends and enviable international travels.

Earlier this week, while foreign governments called on China to release Ai, China's most famous artist, from detention or state his whereabouts, Ai’s family took a more immediate strategy. They wrote out a flyer. Hand scribbled, and signed by Ai’s mother and his older sister, the flyer was photographed and circulated online, though, each time it popped up on the Web, it was censored moments later. His mother confirmed for me the authenticity. (I wrote a Profile of Ai for The New Yorker last year.) This was not a piece of art; it was an earnest appeal. Across the top, they wrote “Missing Person”:

Ai Weiwei, male, 53 years old. On April 3, 2011 around 8:30, at Beijing Capital International Airport, before boarding a flight to Hong Kong, he was taken away by two men. More than fifty hours later, present whereabouts remains unknown. Please, anyone who knows the whereabouts of the above, contact the family

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/04/ai-weiwei-and-the-law.html#ixzz1JsB74xfp

I FOR AN AI

Ai Weiwei

I FOR AN AI

by Bozidar Brazda

How else to describe an artist who has consistently served Chinese authorities a serious dose of their own mind-fuck tactics and lived to blog the tale? Weiwei's relentless baiting of the Chinese government (he once held a party while they razed his new studio) suggests that his recent arrest might be more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than would be tactful to suggest. And yet there is an undeniably Ghandhi-esque masochism about the whole exchange that's difficult to ignore.

Ai Weiwei is suspected of avoiding taxes, and the sums are quite large

facebook

public letter

April 15, 2011

Ai Weiwei Studio’s staff, family and volunteers published an open letter urging the authorities to follow the law and appropriate procedures in handling Ai Weiwei’s case, and to investigate into the disappearance of the associates.

free ai weiwei

Free Ai Weiwei is an information hub on news and events related to the detention of
Chinese artist/architect/social commentator, Ai Weiwei. Follow us @freeaiww and on Facebook.

1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei

1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei, April 17, 2011, 1 pm, organized by Creative Time, outside the Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations, 42nd Street and the West Side Highway

Sunday, April 17, 2011

"1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei," New York, April 17, 2011, 1 pm

Most of the few hundred people who gathered to protest the arrest of Ai Weiwei were sitting in chairs outside of China's UN consulate by 1 pm this afternoon, the official start of the action. They were there for 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei, an event suggested by curator Steven Holmes as a tribute of sorts to Ai's installation Fairytale: 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs, which featured just that number of wooden chairs and was staged in 2007 at Documenta 12.

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"fuck your mother"

grass mud horse song