twitter. the key to democracy?

In a global exclusive, artist Ai Weiwei explains the role of social media and its effect on the Chinese government.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/03/17/twitter.amanpour.cnn

BP koopt zoekopdrachten op

Oliebedrijf BP koopt massaal zoektermen die op zoekmachines als Google en Bing verwijzen naar de olieramp om zijn gedeukte imago op te krikken. Intussen zouden er opnieuw boringen worden toegelaten in de Golf van Mexico.

Wie in de VS 'oil spil' intikt, krijgt een resem 'gesponsorde links' die doorverwijzen naar de nieuwssite van BP met commentaar op de ramp in de Golf van Mexico.

http://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikels/2010/06/10/bp-koopt-zoekopdrachten-op

Ai Weiwei - Fairytale Project for Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007

http://cuids.org/images/uploads/ai_weiwei_documenta-2.pdf

Ai Weiwei – Fairytale Project for Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007

Once upon a time, a big book was lying among piles of others on the large wooden table of internationally acclaimed polymath artist, curator, writer, publisher and architect Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing), one of the most complex and influential personalities in the development of Chinese contemporary art for over twenty years. It was a book about space. Ai Weiwei cheerfully showed his guests a quotation by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the pioneering Russian space theorist, printed on one of the first pages:
First inevitably comes the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream.
These words condensed the whole process, conceived as an artwork itself, of the large- scale, multi-faceted project about “possibility and imagination” that Ai Weiwei will present this summer at Documenta 12. In reply to the three leitmotifs of the exhibition - “Is modernity our antiquity?”, “What is bare life?” and “What is to be done?”, Ai Weiwei will bring to Kassel, native town of the famed, fable writing Grim Brothers, an extremely extensive, variegated and inestimably valuable documentation of this moment in history, a concrete yet poetic evidence of the historical, socio-cultural, human landscape of today’s China. The project requires enormous financial, organizational, technical and human resources. With a 3.1 million Euro budget—sponsored by the Leister Foundation, Switzerland, the Erlenmeyer Foundation, Switzerland and Galerie Urs Meile Beijing- Lucerne—Ai Weiwei has merged his dream with reality, creating his Fairytale.
In terms of size and concept, Fairytale is the biggest and the most multilayered work ever developed by Ai Weiwei, and one of the most ambitious projects ever presented in the history of Documenta. Consisting of three installations, a part of the project will also include living individuals: Fairytale – 1001 Chinese Visitors is a living installation involving 1001 Chinese citizens who will visit the small town of Kassel (population 194,796) in a trip fully designed by Ai Weiwei and organized by the more than 30 people currently working in the FAKE team, the temporary travel agency that the artist set up for the occasion.
The 1001 Chinese travelers will be in this Documenta as tourists, viewers and as part of the artwork. The travelers will be divided into 5 groups, each group traveling in succession between June 12 and July 9, 2007, and were selected from the more than 3,000 people who enthusiastically reacted to the travel offer application published by Ai Weiwei on his personal blog (also a part of the project) over a three day period. Thanks to the support of the sponsors, as well as the Directors of Documenta, Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the German Ambassador to China, Volker Stanzel, Ai Weiwei was able to initiate an enormous process with several different aspects, including: the planning of the tourist and educational activities, the location of suitable infrastructures, the creation of proper living and sanitary conditions, the design of a specially created travel-set (luggage, clothes, computer related technology, etc.) and utensils and furniture, the recruiting of personnel (cooks, video makers, photographers, etc.), the processing of visa applications, the purchase of flight tickets, and travel insurance. Ai Weiwei’s travelers, whose ages range from 2 to 70, come from dissimilar social classes and have dissimilar occupations and lifestyles: among them, for example, are policemen, teachers, students, artists and designers, but also
farmers coming from a remote minority village in Guanxi Province, where women, not having a fixed name or identity card, were out of the public register before starting the bureaucratic procedures connected with Fairytale. Ai Weiwei comments: “This process made people really realize what it means to be a man or woman as an identity and with a Nation: you have to go through the system, and the system can be simple or more complicated”.
One of the topics stressed in Fairytale is the person as a single individual (as opposed to a mass or collective), with his or her own unique story, background, ways of thinking and fantasies. For this reason each participant was asked to fill out a form with 99 questions and is filmed during the preparatory stage, during the trip and after returning to China by Ai Weiwei’s professional documentary team. If Ai Weiwei decided to offer a journey to a place about which many applicants never even heard before, to which many would have never traveled by their own accord or because of financial restrictions, it is because, as he says, “this becomes a very foreign experience in anyone’s personal life,” an experience that will help each participant to think differently. The logo designed for the project strictly follows this logic: graphically links the number to the “F” in “Fairytale,” and at the same time conceptually emphasizes “1,” and not “1001”: “That means,” Ai Weiwei states, “that in this project 1001 is not represented by one project, but by 1001 projects, as each individual will have his or her own independent experience.”
Besides Fairytale – 1001 Chinese Visitors, the second large-scale installation by Ai Weiwei for Documenta 12 is Template, a work that will be exhibited in the courtyard of the greenhouse designed by Lacaton and Vassel also known as the “Crystal Palace,” a temporary building erected ad hoc for Documenta 12. The architecture of Template is comprised of late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden windows and doors which formerly used to belong to destroyed houses in the Shanxi area, Northern China, where entire old towns have been pulled down. Ai Weiwei bought the last fragments of that civilization and relocated them in a completely contemporary setting: “It really is a mixed, troubled, questioning context,” explains the artist, “and a protest for its own identity.” Once counted, the pieces of which Template is made up surprisingly turned out to be exactly tantamount to 1001, a coincidence that Ai Weiwei finds significant. The wooden architectural elements of Template are joined together in five layers per side, forming an open vertical structure having an eight-pointed base. In spite of its large size (7.2 x 12 x 8.5 m), from afar the installation conveys the illusion of being something foldable, like a gigantic three-dimensional papercut. Where the external framework is massive and regular, the internal part of each wall made out of windows and doors is shaped according to the volume of a hypothetical Chinese traditional temple, giving the impression that the whole wooden construction was assembled around a building that later has been removed. While standing in the middle of Template, the viewer is surrounded by a space that is fictional, abstract and ethereal. Ai Weiwei explains: “To me the temple itself—you know I’m not religious—means a station where you can think about the past and the future, it’s a void space. The selected area—not the material temple itself—tells you that the real physical temple is not there, but constructed through the leftovers of the past.”
In Ai Weiwei’s eyes, “events like Documenta or Fairytale are like temples.” This idea serves as the point of departure for Fairytale – 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs, the third installation of Ai Weiwei’s Documenta project. The work is comprised of 1001 late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden chairs that will be spread in groups around the different exhibition venues. Islands for discussion and communication, the groups of chairs were also conceived as “stations for reflection” not only for Ai Weiwei’s 1001 Chinese tourists,
but also for the citizens of Kassel and all the visitors coming from all over the world in order to visit Documenta.
Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale will stage a massive encounter between totally different cultures, each confronting the Other and the unknown, in a context that is both familiar and strange. If Ai Weiwei will introduce the Chinese to the exotic, fabled land of Kassel, he will also bring the feared Asian dragons into the context of a small European town. “Kassel is a place where people gather, live and disappear on their own paths once the visit is over,” states Ai Weiwei, “I think that past and future, these two realities, which are both internal and external to each person, are all integrated in very different forms and possibilities that make each individual unique, with his or her own life, landscape, possibilities... To me it’s just reality. It can be sad, it can be magical, it can be wonderful, it’s a way for me to approach reality and to try and grab as much as possible. The whole West-East imagination or fear will be under the moon, across the street: they will meet. There is such a hype around China. Well, it is about 1/5 of the whole world’s population. There are a lot of fantasies and concerns about this country. I think that now it’s time that all these fantasies about life and art can meet.”
By Nataline Colonnello
All the quotations by Ai Weiwei are excerpts of an interview with the artist held in his Beijing studio on April 3, 2007.

digital activism as a strategy for fostering positive social change

Watch online as Ai Weiwei, a leading Chinese artist and pioneer in the use of blogging and Twitter in China, has a thought-provoking conversation with Jack Dorsey, creator and cofounder of Twitter, and Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb, the internationally respected technology blog. They will discuss the relevance of social media technology in our global society, and the emergence of digital activism as a strategy for fostering positive social change

http://www.livestream.com/readwriteweb

visuele documentatie

On the Chineseness of contemporary Chinese art

On the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese Contemporary Art

by Paul Gladston 2006
Paul Gladston – The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China


In recent months two significant exhibitions have been mounted which seek to address the continuing question of the ‘Chineseness’ of contemporary Chinese art: The Wall: Reshaping Chinese Art at Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts and Entry Gate at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai. Although the curators of these exhibitions – Gao Minglu and Victoria Lu respectively - openly acknowledge the hybridity of contemporary Chinese art, they also argue that it has been continually misinterpreted by critics who frame its meanings solely from a Western theoretical/conceptual perspective. Indeed, each has asserted in essays published in the catalogues to their exhibitions that there is a pressing need to reassess contemporary Chinese art not only through the application of specifically Chinese philosophical/conceptual paradigms, but also through a more precise understanding of the relationship between the ways in which that art has been both produced and received and the historical development of Chinese culture and society.

According to Gao Minglu, the lead curator of The Wall, Western theory mistakenly upholds two interrelated conceptual models as the sole basis for its readings of contemporary Chinese art. The first is the binary ordering of thought characteristic of the Western rationalist tradition where an understanding of the world is articulated according to opposing, non-identical, asymmetrically valued terms. As numerous commentators have indicated, within the ambit of this conceptual order there is a persistent tendency to think of contemporary Chinese art not only as belated, but also as redundant of the earlier Western ‘historical’ and ‘neo’ avant-gardes. The second is the more recent, but now pervasively influential, theory and practice of deconstruction which, it can be argued, has severely problematized the categorical truth claims advanced under the aegis of Western binary rationalism. As advocates of deconstruction would have it, any notion of the straightforward historical primacy of Western avant-garde art can be understood to have been suspended by the evident supplementarity of contemporary Chinese art, whose hybrid status as an extension of, and addition to the Western avant-garde destabilizes any straightforward categorical opposition between the two; a condition often referred to, with reference to Homi Bhaba’s notion of ‘third-space’.

In Gao’s opinion both of these conceptual models are inimical to a thoroughgoing understanding of contemporary Chinese art: the first on the grounds that a categorical ordering of opposing concepts does not coincide precisely with discourse in the Chinese philosophical/cultural tradition, which has (somewhat paradoxically from a Western rationalist perspective) conventionally sought to emphasize mutuality and reciprocity (Yin Yang) and unity (Yi Ti; He Yi; He, Tai He) as persistent foils to difference; and the second because, as Gao would have, of an ahistoricism inherent to the theory and practice of deconstruction that effaces any precise consideration of contemporary Chinese art’s relationship to traditional Chinese society and culture by focusing persistently instead on the present spatio-temporal indeterminacy of its standing vis-à-vis that of the West (a move which can be interpreted, as Rasheed Araeen has indicated, as a perpetuation of Western Orientalism).

In short, Gao makes the point that, despite the counter-foundationalism of the theory and practice of deconstruction, there has been a continuing and paradoxically limiting tendency to assume the universal applicability of Western theory to a reading of Chinese cultural and social contexts which, it can be argued, have developed in relation to their own, distinct conceptual traditions.

What Gao then goes on to advocate is the necessity of an enquiry that does not see contemporary Chinese art simply in terms of its relationship to the artistic discourses of the West, but also (and - as Gao seems to imply - more importantly) in respect of its continuing interaction with a specifically Chinese historical socio-cultural milieu.

Although this intended shift of focus has been presented as a significant development in the debate surrounding contemporary Chinese art, it is in many ways a predictable one. More sober commentators, skeptical of the wilder dealings of contemporary Western theory, would almost certainly look to Gao’s intervention as one that seeks to make the now seemingly common sense point that in approaching a given object of historical analysis there is a continuing need for sensitivity to the specific contexts within which it is both produced and received and to the actual outcomes/effects of its production and reception in relation to those contexts. Indeed, more rigorous exponents of poststructuralist theory and practice would themselves - despite their adherence to the serial incompleteness of signification – almost certainly uphold such a view insofar as they would regard it as impossible to detach a text from its interaction with a wider socio-cultural milieu without re-entering into an unduly and arbitrarily limiting neo-formalism.

That said – Gao’s positioning in relation to this question is a potentially problematic one. Although the notion that the application of a Western conceptual (dis)order to works of art that have been produced within (or in relation to) a Chinese socio-cultural milieu with its own discernible intellectual tradition is open to criticism broadly in the terms set out by Gao, it is nevertheless possible to advance a number of qualifications which complicate his argument.

First, it is not entirely clear that a Chinese intellectual/cultural tradition can be disentangled cleanly from its Western counterpart. While there are areas of substantial and problematic difference it is nevertheless possible to discern numerous areas of similarity and congruence. Indeed, the fact of their comparability as ‘traditions of thought’ is by itself an indication of an inescapable degree of resonance. Moreover, it would be wrong to assume that both have proceeded historically in total isolation one from the other. Western philosophy has had a long-standing fascination with a Chinese ‘other’ which it has attempted both to marginalize (Goethe, Russell) and assimilate (Leibniz). Conversely, the tradition of Chinese thought has been marked by reciprocal strivings to come to terms, amongst other things, with the instrumental force of Western scientific rationalism (viz. the May 4th movement and Mao Zedong’s upholding of dialectical materialism). Further to which, while it would almost certainly be wrong to map one straightforwardly and simplistically upon the other, there are arguably undeniable similarities between the seemingly paradoxical modes of thought characteristic of the Chinese intellectual tradition and the counter-rationalism of deconstruction. Here, rather than simply being inimical to one another, the trajectory Chinese and Western intellectual traditions can be understood to have found in recent years a certain degree of common ground.

Second, it could be argued that Gao significantly underplays the potential of deconstructive theory and practice to attend to the ‘historical’ structuration of conceptuality. Here, it might be averred that rather than simply being a ready means of destabilizing any rational spatio-temporal ordering of the ‘present’ relationship between the Western avant-garde and contemporary Chinese art, deconstruction also offers the possibility of a close attention to the extended circumstances surrounding an interaction between Western and Chinese artistic/aesthetic traditions. Put another way, while the theory and practice of deconstruction can be understood to severely undermine conventional notions of historical accretion and continuity, they are not, as Gao and others would appear to assume, straightforwardly antipathetic to ‘historical’ interpretation. Indeed, the most cursory inspection of the writings of Jacques Derrida reveals that the conceptualization of deconstruction is indivisible from a close and extended scrutiny of the historical narration of thought.

Third, contemporary Chinese art is, by dint of its ‘historical’ positioning, inescapably enmeshed – regardless of any genealogy of cultural hybridity which could and can be drawn up to undermine the primacy of Western art – with the prior example set by the Western historical and neo avant-gardes. Consequently, despite the undeniable, and indeed necessary, openness of that art to reception from a position immersed in Chinese socio-cultural discourse, it is arguably always already, itself a hybrid that, as such, invites attention both from the standpoint of the Western and Chinese social and cultural traditions; and indeed from an undecideable, deconstructive ‘conceptuality’ that plays across the boundary between the two.

Fourth, there is a danger in relation to Gao’s positioning – more sharply drawn by writings published in the catalogue to the recent Entry Gate exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai – of the invocation of some sort of alignment between the presentation of contemporary Chinese art and reassertions of a belief in the distinctiveness of a Chinese national cultural identity. Seen from a Western standpoint - with its now ingrained distrust of ontological certainty – an alignment of this sort runs the risk of an unjustifiable appeal to some form of cultural essentialism.

Gao Minglu’s position while a telling and timely critique of the de-territorializing tendencies of the trans-national scholarly and curatorial presentation of Chinese contemporary art, is therefore open to criticism on the grounds that it implies an inversion of the polarities of Occidental-Oriental cultural reception in a manner that does not seem, in its present form at least, to pay sufficient attention to the complex and potentially un-resolvable discursive interaction between the two played out in relation to the corpus of contemporary Chinese art.
What remains, perhaps, is then another archeology; one that countenances from the outset the validity and necessity of the reception of contemporary Chinese art from the locus of an engagement with the history of Chinese culture and society, but which does not overlook by turns a detailed comparative study of that reception in relation to the analysis of Chinese contemporary art from a Western cultural and intellectual standpoint; a bifurcation of view points arguably prefigured and embodied by the hybrid standing of contemporary Chinese art. More grim workers in this field will surely follow.

china conduct in Gent!

Zie dringend:
http://chinaconduct.com/contemporarychin.html
Wat is er toch allemaal onder de zon!

eetbare sculpturen - belgische chocolade

Dit is een zeer interessant filmpje over Belgische chocolade die de Chinese markt verovert...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8486259.stm

Hanno Rauterberg: Protected by pictures (06/11/2009) - signandsight

Hanno Rauterberg: Protected by pictures (06/11/2009) - signandsight

Protected by pictures

An interview with Ai Weiwei in the cellar of Munich's Haus der Kunst, where the artist was preparing to turn the place into a battlefield. With Hanno Rauterberg

What would megalomaniac modesty look like? Is there such a thing as relaxed rebellion? A state of peace which is all get-up-and-go? Well Ai Weiwei certainly exists. An artist who is not afraid to take on the mightiest of enemies, the dictators in Beijing. Who demands democracy at the top of his voice, freedom of speech, equal rights for all! Who refuses to be silenced, even if they lock him up, even if the police break down his door in the middle of the night and beat him to the ground, as they did just recently. He kept up the protest , even as the blood pured down his face, pulling out his camera and photographing the the police as they carried him off. It looks likes a family outing. The whole world should see this image: the terror and the un-terrified.

China's unfinished ghost town - Video News Live

China's unfinished ghost town - Video News Live

Acconci en AI Wewei

Acconci Studio and Ai Weiwei: A Collaborative Project
8 May – 4 July 2010

Finissage: Saturday, 3 July 2010, 7pm

Para/Site Art Space
G/F, 4 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan
Hong Kong
www.para-site.org.hk

Curator: Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya

Para/Site Art Space presents a collaborative new project by Acconci Studio and Ai Weiwei. This is the first time that both artists create a work together, and for this purpose they have been invited by Para/Site Art Space to use Hong Kong as the background of this exciting experience.

This exhibition engages two artists/architects with parallel trajectories, having both started from an interest in performance, and moved later on to architecture. These "touching points" in both of them will act as common ground to develop a new body of works. This innovative approach to exhibition making can only be practiced at an organization like Para/Site Art Space that operates independently without the constraints of larger organizations. Both artists have never met before, although they mutually admire each other, making this cooperative process a sort of "blind date" for the artists. The project transforms the gallery space into a 3D grid, where both studios develop a work in progress. The installation will be in constant mutation and accumulation during the two months that it is open to the public. New works, models, drawings and various materials are added through the period of the exhibition, and it is the result of the ongoing discussion between Ai Weiwei, Vito Acconci and their studios. The result is a multilayered installation that defies orthodox definitions and approaches.

Vito Acconci started writing in the 60s poetry in New York. In 1967 he founded the influential 0 to 9 magazine. He performed his "Following Pieces" in 1969. Throughout his career, text has been playing a pivotal role in his works. Performances were documented, filmed and registered as part of this process. In the 70s Vito Acconci's work explored the use of public space in order to search for a wider social context. In 1988 he founded Acconci Studio, an architectural practice that included architects and artists working under this framework. Acconci Studio works towards the development of public commissions constructing a critique of architecture and public space.

Ai Weiwei is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists from his generation. He has engaged in design, architecture, curating, writing and publishing. Ai Weiwei states "I'm my own readymade", with reference to Marcel Duchamp. He currently operates also with FAKE Design, his own company and works within a team. His political activism has made him a household name.

Public programme: Talk by Hans Ulrich Obrist on art and architecture.

A DVD with the conversation between Vito Acconci and Ai Weiwei is available at Asia Art Archive.

About Para/Site
Para/Site Art Space is a contemporary art space located in Hong Kong Island and founded in 1996. We host an ambitious programme of exhibitions, screenings, talks and events that bring into Hong Kong some of the leading practitioners in the international arena, encourage the visibility of artists from Hong Kong, and facilitate East-West dialogue. We have a satellite venue located at Hanart TZ Gallery which showcases a younger generation of artists.

Para/Site Art Space manages also a Curatorial Training Programme, generously funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. This is the only programme of this nature that focuses on East and Southeast Asia. Former lecturers have included Hu Fang, Jens Hoffman, Charles Merewether or Jun Yap.

Para/Site Art Space has organized the official representation of Hong Kong in Venice Biennial in years 2003 and 2009, has also participated in Gwangju Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial, among others. Para/Site Art Space exhibitions and programmes have traveled to Germany, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Singapore and Australia.

Para/Site Art Space is run by a Executive Director/Curator, a Manager, a Programme Coordinator and an Education and Development Officer and governed by a board of directors. Para/Site is supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council as well as vital contributions from patrons and Founding Friends of Para/Site.

For media contact, please contact:
Dominique Chiu
Email: dominique@para-site.org.hk
Tel: +852 2517 4620

communication is not connection

Communication ≠ Connection

One of the great mysteries of our time—besides the reason why the United States is still in Iraq after seven years, the magical thinking that enabled banks around the world to sell bad debts as good investments, and perhaps we can add here the enduring significance of Jeff Koons—is how the ever-expanding methods by which we communicate with one another—from cell phones to SMS, from e-mail to Twitter, from Facebook to Chatroulette—are alienating us from others and ourselves. (...)

But having more social contacts has not made for stronger social bonds. All the texting and friending may expand the number of people in one’s life, but the links do not enrich the quality of the arrangements. Common interests bring people together. But what keeps them together is neither common nor easy. It takes an evolving awareness of the differences that naturally develop between two individuals, and a commitment to allow those differences to take root, so that common connections grow into singular bonds. The open secret to this process is time, the only dimension capable of registering the moments and ruptures that define the growth of an individual abiding an unbridgeable difference to become one for the other.

zie: Paul Chan
The Unthinkable Community

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/144

BETREFT ONDERZOEK

Dag allemaal,

Ik wil hier even kort ingaan op Samira's opmerking omtrent het werkweekend dat we voorzien in het verkiezingsweekend.
Samira's vraag lijkt me niet onterecht. Het is momenteel nog wat (te) vaag. Ik was trouwens van plan om deze week terug erin te vliegen (nu mijn huis eindelijk te koop staat... en de werf begonnen is) en de komende maand al converserend/met visuele documentatie te komen tot een sterk uitgangspunt voor samenwerking.
Dus hier volgt opnieuw een aanzet:

Ons project is een onderzoeksproject. Dat wil zeggen dat we iets onderzoeken in relatie tot Ai Weiwei (tot zijn werk, tot China) middels artistiek onderzoek: een conversatie met Ai Weiwei's werk die liefst 'diepgaand' is en de gelaagdheid (formeel/maatschappelijk/politiek/lokaal/globaal) 'meeneemt'. Misschien moeten wel letterlijk deze vragen aan onze eigen maaksels stellen: wat heeft dit vormelijk, maatschappelijk, politiek, globaal, lokaal (China/Belgische context) te vertellen?

Ons project is een groepsonderzoek. Dat wil zeggen dat interactie (op verschillende vlakken) een basisconditie is. Vraag is hoe deze alle potentie van de groep aanboort om te komen tot interactie die het onderzoek in relatie tot AI Weiwei versterkt.

Ik denk dat we momenteel in een faze zitten dat we verschillende werkwijzen moeten uitproberen. (Misschien moet ik daarbij meer coachend en instructiever zijn?)

Momenteel zijn we allemaal individueel aan de slag gegaan. Ik denk dat het visueel documenteren van die verschillende pistes zeer belangrijk is en ook zeker wat zal opleveren. Ook al omdat dit meestal processen, randinformatie en relaties (op visueel niveau) blootlegt. Het geeft de groep ook meer de kans om visueel en via schrift commentaar bij elkaars werk te leveren, aan te vullen, voorstellen te doen.(maar dan altijd met de link Ai Weiwei in het achterhoofd!?) Het lijkt me zeker mogelijk om te kijken of we op metaniveau de verschillende pistes kunnen kaderen (ook dit is een vorm van maken! eentje die mij wel aanspreekt maar ze is trager omdat iedereen ook een duidelijk individuele piste uitzet)

Letterlijk samen maken is een andere piste (zoals Johan voorstelde): werk van Ai Weiwei in groep interpretatief her/nieuw/maken (daar komt het voorstel van Johan eigenlijk op neer). Het interessante is dat je dan zeer expliciet met twee polen werkt (het werk van AI Weiwei - onze keuzen en de interpretatie die meteen opduikt).
Misschien is het interessant om tijdens het werkweekend zo een drietal gezamenlijke pistes te openen waarop we ons dan met de groep concentreren. Ondertussen zouden we met ons visueel documentatiemateriaal aan de slag kunnen gaan (groepen, annoteren van fotomateriaal, aanvullen: een soort van database uitwerken).
Ik denk dat dit zeker veel zal opleveren voor ons onderzoek.

Denk hier alvast eens over na en laten we hierover discussiëren via mail of onze blog!
Ik vraag alvast een volmacht voor mezelf en Filip en begin de zoektocht naar een lokaal.
Veel groeten,

Lieve

Financial times interview met cartoon

Lunch with the FT: Ai Weiwei
By David Pilling
Published: April 23 2010 17:22 | Last updated: April 23 2010 17:22

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f04810fc-4e62-11df-b48d-00144feab49a.html

ai weiwei als sandwich

Gelezen:

"Ai Weiwei noemt zichzelf een sandwich: een broodje waarvan het brood Chinees is, maar de vulling, het beleg westers".

http://passie-bloempjes.blogspot.com/2010/03/ai-wei-wei.html

2007, Tate Liverpool

30 March  –  10 June 2007

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/contemporaryartfromchina/exhibitionguide.htm


The energy of the Chinese arts world is not contained, codified, and confined like a lot of work elsewhere; there is a plurality of practice and style, none of which can be said to represent Chinese art. Any idea of a unitary or coherent identity, for the country as much as for the art, has collapsed into an open space of possibility and opportunity.
The exhibition does not therefore seek to be exhaustive, but instead focuses either on those works made since 2000 that are of special interest, or those artists at the forefront of the contemporary scene, either through their continuing relevance and influence, if older, or the power and interest of their ideas and work, if younger.
The year 2000 was chosen as the cut-off point for various reasons: the turn of the millennium was a watershed economically and socially in China - China was admitted to the World Trade Organisation in 2001 and won the right to stage the 2008 Olympic Games in 2003. Ease of movement with increasing international contacts and freedom of information with the opening of the first internet cafes in 2003, had a huge impact upon the kind of art being produced, as did the increasing availability and affordability of new technologies.
2000 also marked the moment when the State recognised the importance, politically, of contemporary art, and the power that contemporary culture could exercise on the international stage, signalling a radical shift in both the status of the artist, and the possibilities open to them.
It would seem that now is a good time to be an artist from China: with the extraordinary international interest in China's contemporary art, and with ready access to labour and materials, perhaps at no other time, and from no other country, does an artist have the opportunity to make works of such ambition.

ingreep Mies van der Rohe paviljoen

Ai Weiwei.  with milk, find something everybody can use. (2009)

In december 2009 vulde Ai de baden/vijvers in het Mies van der Rohe paviljoen in Barcelona met koffie en melk:

http://www.miesbcn.com/en/act2009/aiweiwei.html

http://www.rtve.es/mediateca/videos/20100127/lartista-ai-weiwei/678421.shtml

Vilém Flusser

Hierbij de schrijfwijze van de aangehaalde filosoof

'Vilém Flusser'

www.flusser-archive.org/index

ik heb een aantal tags aangemaakt: image, beeld bvb voor berichten met beelden... zo kunnen we die toch al eens naast of onder elkaar bekijken.
er zouden nog tags moeten aangemaakt worden.

websites

http://www.artspeakchina.org
(ik heb wel grote moeite om de pagina's te openen...)
ArtSpeak China (ASC) is a bilingual, online resource devoted to contemporary Chinese art. It is comprised of a wiki, a collaboratively authored, encyclopedia of contemporary Chinese art and a timeline of related historical and social events. A complementary website, the ASC archive, is under construction and will function as a repository for primary source material contributed by subjects of ASC entries--scanned images of everything from documents and artworks to photographs and artifacts related to contemporary Chinese art.
Founded in 2009, ASC operates as a non-profit organization established through the financial support of Studio Door China, an online presentation platform for member galleries and advisors worldwide.

avant garde
http://www.artspeakchina.org/mediawiki/index.php/Avant-garde_%E5%89%8D%E5%8D%AB
kitch
http://www.artspeakchina.org/mediawiki/index.php/Kitsch_%E7%B2%97%E5%8A%A3%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81

Asia Art Archive
http://www.aaa.org.hk/
Asia Art Archive is a young and dynamic organisation initiated in 2000 as a direct response to the increasing number of Asian contemporary art exhibitions and events world wide. Based in Hong Kong, AAA, a non-profit organisation and registered charity, is dedicated to documenting the recent history of visual art from the region within an international context.

Un-invested Investments: Critical Writing and Publishing in Mainland China
Keith Wallace
http://www.aaa.org.hk/newsletter_detail.aspx?newsletter_id=807


http://www.observationsociety.com/
Observation Society

Established in 2009 by artists and practitioners, this independent art space is situated in the local residential district, aiming to promote contemporary art by young emerging artists.

http://www.arrowfactory.org.cn/
Arrow Factory is an independently run alternative storefront space that seeks to advance artistic collaboration, exploration and experimentation across different cultural contexts and viewing publics. Located in a small hutong in Beijing’s city center, Arrow Factory reclaims existing commercial space to present artworks that stimulate dialogue between art and contemporary urban space. Aimed at reaching a diverse public made up of local residents, as well as local and international art audiences, our modestly sized space (approx 10 square meters or 100 square feet) is intended to create new avenues for artistic production in China and further aesthetic relationships between contemporary art and everyday life. Arrow Factory will invite artists living inside and outside of China to create site-specific installations and projects that will be available for view in its storefront location 7 days a week

AI WEIWEI interview GUARDIAN

Ai Weiwei: 'I have to speak for people who are afraid'
This autumn, Ai Weiwei, China's most outspoken artist, will take over Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. He talks about how his art and politics are indistinguishable

Zie recent interview door The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/18/ai-weiwei-turbine-hall-china

Tentoonstelling Ai Weiwei TURBINE HALL 2010

London
Tate Modern commissions Ai Weiwei

The Guardian reports that artist and activist Ai Weiwei is the 11th artist commissioned to fill Tate Modern’s massive Turbine Hall. The Beijing-based artist’s contribution to the Turbine Hall, one of the UK’s most anticipated public art commissions, follows in a line of such celebrated installations in the past like Olafur Ellasson’s “Weather Project” (2004) and Miroslaw Balka’s “How it is” (2009).

Director of Tate Modern, Vicente Todolí, said Ai's works were "compelling" and "among the most socially engaged works of art being made today […] It will be thrilling to see how he responds to the vast, public environment of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern this October."

Flash Art has recently covered multiple stories that highlight Ai Weiwei’s political engagement and opposition to actions and policies of the Chinese government, including Ai’s piece in the Wall Street Journal about internet censorship – click here

and a recent attack on an artists’ community on the outskirts of Beijing by real estate developers.
click here


www.aiweiwei.com

Oosterse humor

Artproject Picidae doorbreekt internetcensuur in China

Link Picidae

The artproject picidae



Surfing the Internet and the world shrinks to the size of a village. The farthest regions are just one click away. But taking a closer look, the infinite freedom of a virtual space is just an illusion. Why does not even one single website from North Korea exist? Why isn’t there a website about the Tiananmen Massacre from within China, no right wing extremist propaganda from Germany, not one single Pin-Up girl from Iran, no criticism of Islam from Saudi Arabia, no call for a protest rally from Syria?

The World Wide Web, the nervous system of a simultaneous communication and the platform for global data exchange, is quite a diverse heterogeneous formation. Many nations have an active Internet censorship. Government, Internet providers and Internet Services are observing, controlling and even blocking content. Therefore the Internet appears in different forms: tidied up, and in other ways trimmed or fragmented. So what’s about this world that appears on our computer monitors?



Internetcensorship in China

Disposal of language

The criteria of censorship and its technical accomplishment are also clandestine. While continuously eliminating specific content, censorship eradicates criticism as well as discussion, language, and the medium itself.

Automated censorship is unable to make value judgements: targetted words get wiped out arbitrarily. Google China deleted the web site www.bassexperts.com because of the word “sex” in the domainname. The word 屠杀 (massacre) is such a huge problem for the Chinese censorship authorities that all results listed from the search engine www.baidu.cn are immediately replaced by a notification of a network problem. (Baidu search for massacre 屠杀)

Any action of control and censorship influences the handling and meaning of the media itself. The range and conditions beyond our perception and communication are fundamental for our own world view, cognitive ability and expression.

The power of pictures

Because of the fact that information is only detectable automatically in specific encodings and because the bandwith of user Internet connections are already fast enough, we developed the pici-server that generates pictures of websites to access web web pages. We installed the first pici-server in Zurich and started for our self-experiment a journey to the end of the Internet.

Berlin was the starting point of our journey. It was for decades a city divided by the wall, now slowly recovering from the separation. From Berlin we flew to Beijing, a mega city almost exploding by the speed of its development. China is experiencing a massive boom and is still strictly controlled and kept under surveillance by its communist regime.

For three weeks we checked the functions of the Golden Shield, the huge Chinese firewall, in Beijing and Shanghai. For most Chinese the numerous Internet Cafés are their only access to the Internet. Entering the Café everybody is asked for identification, and has to be registered. Like most places within Chinese cities even the rooms are observed by cams. As Europeans it was not possible to avoid being noticed – but even under these aggravating circumstances picidae was running very well. Our server delivered us with all the web sites that are usually only reachable on the other site of the firewall.

With our media art project ZONE*INTERDITE we unveiled some blind spots in our own perception. picidae follows up here and explores our perspective and imagination in relation to the digital information transfer. picidae takes the questions for the image of the world literally. The pici-server delivers images of web pages and uses the image as digital encryption. The power of an image is not calculable.

We have torn a hole in the Chinese firewall.

The first holes in the Berlin wall were torn by so called “Mauerspechte” (engl. wall woodpeckers). The project is named after these first wall breakers: picidae (Latin for woodpecker). The hole in the wall presupposes uncertainty. What is beyond it? A new sight can lead to a new impression or might result in a new notion. Catching sight is a borderline experience: Will I be, will the world be the same afterwards?



pici-server

One way to evade the firewall within China is to install a server or a proxy abroad. Foreign companies in particular benefit from this option. However, people who don’t have such connections abroad, most of them do not even own a computer, are hit by the restrictions even harder. Chinese censorship is disguised as a network problem, or the request is redirected directly to a dummy site. picidae allows us to compare websites from different regions. In this way the amount of censorship appears is exposed openly within China.

picidae allows a glance into another world and opens a new prospective.

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankman

Descending Light vs The Blind Leading the Blind

Selectie uitspraak Mao uit het Rode Boekje

Selectie uitspraak Ai Weiwei op webblog

Bron:

Ai Weiwei, Phaidon

ISBN-13: 9780714848891

ISBN-10: 0714848891

Li Xiaofeng

safety notice

veiligheidsbericht dat werd uitgedeeld bij de ingang van "so sorry" in Munchen

Ai over Wu Wei

Wu Wei is het niets doen of loslaten. Een taoïst probeert zich niet te verzetten tegen de loop der dingen, maar daar spontaan in mee te gaan.

“I think I am more of a Daoist. Confucianism is about the knowledge of how to structure society. Daoism is more about the wisdom of personal accomplishments. Which means to enjoy. In a way it’s a kind of hedonism - it promotes a kind of effortlessness. You are more detached and invest less effort in managing society’s problems. There are various ways to see “Wu Wei”: sometimes you take action, but at the same time you step aside, you try to liberate yourself from your own mental state. I don’t know if it is possible, but still, its concept of liberation is important.”

Ai Weiwei (MONO.KULTUR #22 autumn 2009)

Ai Weiwei in protestmars Beijing

ASIA PACIFIC NEWS : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1039258/1/.html


China artists march over Beijing demolition
Posted: 23 February 2010 1245 hrs


BEIJING: A group of about 20 Chinese artists including outspoken activist Ai Weiwei protested in central Beijing over the demolition of an art zone in the east of the capital, state media reported Tuesday.

The protest on Monday came amid simmering anger in China over land seizures, which have often involved corrupt officials keen to secure real estate profits as the country's property market booms.

The artists decried what they called "assaults by thugs hired by local authorities" to force them out of the complex, and said their land contracts were still valid, the state Global Times newspaper reported.

The government and land developers have said the artists need to move out to make way for redevelopment of the area.

An investigation has been launched into nine alleged assaults, the report said. Local officials denied any involvement in the purported beatings.

The artists attempted to reach Tiananmen Square, the heart of political power in China, but were stopped by police about two kilometres away.

They carried posters reading "Civil Rights!" and "Capital Beijing, brutal demolition!” the Global Times said.

The Xinhua news agency said more than 10 police were sent to disperse the small group of demonstrators, naming Ai - who has a popular but often censored blog - as a participant in the march.

Ai leads a group of volunteers investigating the collapse of poorly built schools in the massive May 2008 earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan, which left more than 87,000 people dead or missing.

Earlier this month, Ai spoke out in support of US Internet giant Google - currently in a row with China over censorship and cyberattacks - and said in a commentary for The Wall Street Journal that his Gmail accounts had been hacked.

- AFP/sc