# data[].attributes.headline
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows - Chs 1-9 class posters/notes

# data[].attributes.subject
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows - Chs 1-9 class posters/notes

# data[].attributes.headline
"Ai Weiwei: 'In the art world, everyone talks about money. It's poisonous; you're only worth as much as your work." El País, (Feb 14, 2025)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Ai Weiwei: 'In the art world, everyone talks about money. It's poisonous; you're only worth as much as your work." El País, (Feb 14, 2025)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei: ‘In the art world, everyone talks about money. It’s poisonous; you’re only worth as much as your work’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
China’s most famous artist lives quietly in Portugal. But exile is hard, even if it’s golden. On the occasion of his latest exhibition at the MUSAC, a contemporary art museum in the city of León, Spain, he shows EL PAÍS the first house he’s ever bought, at the age of 67

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei drifting - art awareness and the refugee crisis  (2017)

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei drifting - art awareness and the refugee crisis  (2017)

# data[].attributes.body
Exiled in Europe, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has made the refugee crisis central to his work. DW Documentary accompanied him behind the scenes of his latest film ‘Human Flow’.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei drifting - art, awareness and the refugee crisis | DW Documentary

# data[].attributes.headline
Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017) Author of Charter 08, recipient of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

# data[].attributes.subject
Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017) Author of Charter 08, recipient of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Liu Xiaobo
The Nobel Peace Prize 2010

Residence at the time of the award: China

Prize motivation: "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"

Prize share: 1/1

Sentenced for the Crime of Speaking

Liu Xiaobo was born on the 28th of December 1955. As a young man he studied literature and philosophy, and worked as a literary critic and university lecturer in Beijing. He took a doctorate in 1988, after which he was a guest lecturer at universities in Europe and the USA.

Liu Xiaobo took part in the student protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989. For that he was sentenced to two years in prison. Later he served three years in a labour camp for having criticised China's one-party system.

For over twenty years, Liu has fought for a more open and democratic China. He demands that the Chinese authorities comply with Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution, which lays down that the country's citizens enjoy "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration".

In 2008, Liu was a co-author of Charta 08, a manifesto which advocates the gradual shifting of China's political and legal system in the direction of democracy. He was arrested in December 2008, and sentenced a year later to eleven years' imprisonment for undermining the state authorities. Liu has constantly denied the charges. "Opposition is not the same as undermining", he points out.

To cite this section
MLA style: Liu Xiaobo - Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 30 Apr 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2010/xiaobo/facts/>

Back to top

Fourteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2022, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Their work and discoveries range from paleogenomics and click chemistry to documenting war crimes.

See them all presented here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Liu Xiaobo The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 Residence at the time of the award: China Prize motivation: "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" Prize share: 1/1 Liu Xiaobo was born on the 28th of December 1955.

# data[].attributes.headline
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir by Ai Weiwei (2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir by Ai Weiwei (2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows — Ai Weiwei Films

# data[].attributes.headline
"The refugee crisis isn't about refugees. It's about us" The Guardian (2 Feb 2018)

# data[].attributes.subject
"The refugee crisis isn't about refugees. It's about us" The Guardian (2 Feb 2018)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
was born in 1957, the same year China purged more than 300,000 intellectuals, including writers, teachers, journalists and whoever dared to criticise the newly established communist government. As part of a series of campaigns led by what was known as the anti-rightist movement, these intellectuals were sent to labour camps for "re-education".

Because my father, Ai Qing, was the most renowned poet in China then, the government made a symbolic example of him. In 1958, my family was forced from our home in Beijing and banished to the most remote area of the country - we had no idea that this was the beginning of a very dark, long journey that would last for two decades.

Our prioritisation of financial gain over people's struggle for the necessities of life is the cause of this crisis

In the years that followed, my father was sentenced to hard labour cleaning latrines in a work camp in north-west China. He was also forced to criticise himself publicly.

From my youth, I experienced inhumane treatment from society. At the camp we had to live in an underground dugout and were subjected to unexplainable hatred, discrimination, unprovoked insults and assaults, all of which aimed to crush the basic human spirit rooted in my father's beliefs. As a result, I remember experiencing what felt like endless injustice. In such circumstances, there is no place to hide and there is no way to escape. You feel like your life is up against a wall, or that life itself is a dimming light, on the verge of being completely extinguished. Coping with the humiliation and suffering became the only way to survive.

I share this personal background because it sheds light on my emotional connection to the current global refugee condition, which I documented in the film Human Flow. My experience clarifies why I identify so deeply with all these unfortunate people who are pushed into extreme conditions by outside forces they are powerless to resist.

During two years of filming, we travelled to 23 nations and 40 refugee camps. Some of the camps are relatively new, coping with those who have fled from the war in Syria. Other camps - such as the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon - have existed for decades and have now sheltered three generations of refugees.

In the months since the film's release, some of the areas we covered have deteriorated even further. The Rohingya refugee situation in Myanmar, for example, has erupted in a wave of more than half a million newly displaced people, adding to the already existing 65 million refugees worldwide.

Observing and researching recent and historical refugee events makes some conclusions abundantly clear. Not a single refugee we met had willingly left their home, even when home was impoverished and undeveloped. The promise of economic prosperity is not more important than place. People left their homes because they were forced to by violence which caused the deaths of family members, relatives and fellow citizens. Often it is not just a single house that is destroyed, but entire villages vanish under indiscriminate bombing. There is simply no way for them to stay. Fleeing is the only choice they have to preserve their own lives and the lives of those they love.

A common argument is that many of the people who try to reach the west are economic migrants who wish to take unfair advantage of its prosperity. However, this view ignores the contradiction between today's physical borders and the real political and economic boundaries of our globalised world. Also implicit is a refusal to acknowledge that through globalisation, certain states, institutions and individuals have greatly profited at the direct expense of those in many parts of the world who are vulnerable and increasingly exploited.

At this moment, the west - which has disproportionately benefited from globalisation - simply refuses to bear its responsibilities, even though the condition of many refugees is a direct result of the greed inherent in a global capitalist system. If we map the 70-plus border walls and fences built between nations in the past three decades - increasing from roughly a dozen after the fall of the Berlin Wall - we can see the extent of global economic and political disparities. The people most negatively affected by these walls are the poorest and most desperate of society.

'Because my father, Ai Qing, was the most renowned poet in China then, the government made a symbolic example of him.' Ai Qing with his family in 1962. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

In nature there are two approaches to dealing with flooding. One is to build a dam to stop the flow. The other is to find the right path to allow the flow to continue. Building a dam does not address the source of the flow - it would need to be built higher and higher, eventually holding back a massive volume. If a powerful flood were to occur, it could wipe out everything in its path. The nature of water is to flow. Human nature too seeks freedom and that human desire is stronger than any natural force.

Can physical borders stop refugees? Instead of building walls, we should look at what is causing people to become refugees and work to solve those conditions to stem the flow at its source. To do so will require the most powerful nations in the world to adjust how they are actively shaping the world, how they are using political and economic ideology - enforced by overwhelming military power - to disrupt entire societies. How do we think the poor, displaced or occupied can exist when their societies are destroyed? Should they simply disappear? Can we recognise that their continued existence is an essential part of our shared humanity? If we fail to recognise this, how can we speak of "civilised" development?

The refugee crisis is not about refugees, rather, it is about us. Our prioritisation of financial gain over people's struggle for the necessities of life is the primary cause of much of this crisis. The west has all but abandoned its belief in humanity and support for the precious ideals contained in declarations on universal human rights. It has sacrificed these ideals for short-sighted cowardice and greed.

Establishing the understanding that we all belong to one humanity is the most essential step for how we might continue to coexist on this sphere we call Earth. I know what it feels like to be a refugee and to experience the dehumanisation that comes with displacement from home and country. There are many borders to dismantle, but the most important are the ones within our own hearts and minds - these are the borders that are dividing humanity from itself.

Ai Weiwei is a contemporary artist, activist and advocate of political reform in China

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The refugee crisis isn't about refugees. It's about us | Ai Weiwei

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
was born in 1957, the same year China purged more than 300,000 intellectuals, including writers, teachers, journalists and whoever dared to criticise the newly established communist government. As part of a series of campaigns led by what was known as the anti-rightist movement, these intellectuals were sent to labour camps for "re-education".

# data[].attributes.body
Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Human Flow (Official Movie Site): Home - Own It On Digital HD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Human Flow (Official Movie Site) - Own It On Digital HD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration.

# data[].attributes.body
Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) is a nongovernmental, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization beyond borders based on free association of those who write, edit, translate, research and publish literature work in Chinese and dedicated to freedom of expression for the workers in Chinese language and literature, including writers, journalists, translators, scholars and publishers over the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sydney, Australia: The Office of Tibet, Canberra, in collaboration with the Chinese Alliance for Democracy, organised a seminar titled “Sino-Tibet Relations in the Post Xi Jinping Era” at Sydney University on 10 July 2024.

# data[].attributes.headline
Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis; Illustrated by Gianlucca Costantini (2024)

# data[].attributes.subject
Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis; Illustrated by Gianlucca Costantini (2024)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei’s ‘Zodiac’ Is a Mystical Memory Tour

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Like a cosmological comic, the artist’s new ‘graphic memoir’ entwines recalled experience with legend and imagination.

# data[].attributes.body
Documentary about the Stars Exhibition (1978)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the police shut down an art show hung on a park fence, and arrested activist Wei Jingsheng for posting an essay on Democracy Wall, thousands of citizens take to the streets near Tiananmen Square. Hidden for decades, footage from these daring acts of rebellion is now featured in Beijing Spring.

# data[].attributes.headline
 Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (12 Oct 2017 - 11 Feb 2018) New York City

# data[].attributes.subject
 Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (12 Oct 2017 - 11 Feb 2018) New York City

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world’s treasures online.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Ai Weiwei: The artwork that made me the most dangerous person in China" The Guardian (15 Feb 2018)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Ai Weiwei: The artwork that made me the most dangerous person in China" The Guardian (15 Feb 2018)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I trained as an artist in New York, but I never really knew how my art would function in the so-called art world. I didn't feel part of it and nobody was interested in me. Then in 2008, after I had moved back to China, Sichuan had an earthquake.

It was devastating: more than 80,000 lives disappeared. Many of the dead were young people at school and university. I'd been writing a daily blog - about modern Chinese society, the government and art - but I stopped suddenly. People asked me why but, faced with such a tragedy, I was silenced. I couldn't find the right vocabulary.

Remembering ... the sentence a mother wrote about her lost daughter - created with 9,000 student backpacks. Photograph: Ai Weiwei

The Chinese government censored and controlled all of the information about the earthquake, so people didn't know the details of what really happened. I wanted to know how many students had lost their lives. Schools built by the state are supposed to be very secure - they should not collapse. I made hundreds of phone calls to the education department, the police and civil departments, to ask questions about the student casualties, but of course nobody would talk to me.

So I used the internet to set up a citizen investigation team. On my blog, I said: "This is my question: Where are those lives?" A lot of young people began following me intensively online and we soon had a team of 100 people. We went out to the crisis area, to the ruins of the earthquake. We knocked on doors around the villages and met victims' parents. The information we requested was simple: names, dates of birth, the schools the children lost their lives at. We asked our team to record all the details they were given in diaries when they were in the disaster areas - just very plain language with no emotion.

After a year of knocking on doors, we had the names of 5,219 children who had died

Over the months, members of our team were arrested many times. Police would confiscate their belongings, delete the names they'd written down and erase photos. But we stayed determined and sent new people in. After almost a year of research, we had 5,219 names. Eventually, the government shut off the blog because there were too many people reading it and following us. This made me increasingly conscious of social and political issues relating to the internet.

I had a show coming up in Munich and decided to cover the Haus der Kunst museum's facade with one sentence from a victim's mother. She had written to me: "All I want is to let the world remember she had been living happily for seven years." This beautiful little girl was just the same as any other: she liked to dance, to sing. But suddenly - because of the negligence of the government, the corruption in construction - there wasn't a safe building for her to go to school in.

The work was called Remembering. Given all our social and political investigations, it was about how, in Chinese society, with censorship and control, individuals can still take action to defend their very, very fragile rights. It was also the culmination of all my years on the internet. I've been blogging since 2005, so when that show happened in Munich in 2009, it was like all my efforts were coming to a head. Not long after, I was put in jail and had all kinds of struggles with authority. Remembering was a high point.

The kind of authoritarian state we have in China cannot survive if it answers questions - if the truth is revealed, they are finished. So they started to think of me as the most dangerous person in China. That made me become an artist, but also an activist. So for Remembering, I covered the whole of the Haus der Kunst's facade with children's backpacks, spelling out in Chinese what that mother had told me. The design and the colours were inspired by Toys R Us.

The Haus der Kunst is a historical building. The architects made it especially for Hitler. They all knew he loved art but had never been accepted as an artist. He criticised any work he considered "degenerate" - any abstraction or early examples of surrealism. So to cover that museum's facade was a very political act, a very dramatic act. It took 9,000 student backpacks to construct that sentence.

Of course, there is a front door to the museum, so people had to pass right through this sentence. They didn't understand the Chinese writing, so it forced them to find out, to learn, to read about the show. Munich is a city full of art lovers and collectors and it became very popular.

Devastation in Sichuan, which Ai Weiwei blamed on government negligence. Photograph: Chien-min Chung/Getty Images

I have made many other works relating to the Sichuan earthquake, but this one had a profound impact on how I deal with social and political issues. It's about a real-life tragedy, the human condition, civil rights - an embodiment of my passion and imagination. If I hadn't engaged with that tragedy, I would not be the artist I am today. I cannot imagine I'd still be making art if I wasn't reflecting my political views.I am interested in ideas, how to conceptualise them, create a language and find possibilities. Those matter to me more than the final object. My work is about my life, my consciousness, my sensitivity and my skill in dealing with different matters. This was especially true of Remembering, which had a huge impact on my subsequent output.

Sometimes when I make an artwork, it requires all those things. It requires my life. This is quite a responsibility. It can be unpredictable and dangerous. If you cut into a tree and look at its rings, you can see certain years have left more of a mark in the wood. That's what the Sichuan earthquake did to me.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei: The artwork that made me the most dangerous person in China

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2009, the dissident artist created a work to honour the thousands of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China's rulers - and changed his career for ever

# data[].attributes.headline
"Dumbass: Ai Weiwei releases heavy metal music video" The Guardian (22 May 2013)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Dumbass: Ai Weiwei releases heavy metal music video" The Guardian (22 May 2013)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dumbass: Ai Weiwei releases heavy metal music video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chinese artist says single is a way of venting the trauma he experienced while held in detention by the state

# data[].attributes.body
Ai Weiwei’s “Cockroach” (2020) is a documentary film about the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cockroach — Ai Weiwei Films : Ai Wei Wei films : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ai Wei Wei documentary film of 2019 HongKong protest movemnt

# data[].attributes.headline
Good Fences, Make Good Neighbors, NYC (2017-18)

# data[].attributes.subject
Good Fences, Make Good Neighbors, NYC (2017-18)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world’s treasures online.

# data[].attributes.headline
National Consortium for Teaching about Asia

# data[].attributes.subject
National Consortium for Teaching about Asia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Quality Programs

NCTA has been offering professional development opportunities for K-12 educators since 1998. Our programming has evolved to meet changes in local, state and national educational policies as well as new economic realities. We have embraced new technology to reach new cohorts of teachers while ensuring the quality of our programming.

Great Resources

Our programs incorporate a multitude of resources for your classroom. Our website features NCTA-created videos and curriculum and is a gateway to quality and up-to-date resources on East Asia, including webinars, books for your students and teaching materials.

Keeping Educators in Mind

As the premier provider of professional development on East Asia, we engage educators through positive dialogue and sharing. Be it in our remote or in-person programs, we value your experience, knowledge and classroom work. NCTA talks with teachers. We look forward to seeing you and your colleagues in our remote or in-person classes. Visit our programs page today to find the best course for you.

Statement on Anti-Asian Racism and Violence

As attacks against Asians and Asian-Americans throughout the country increase, the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA) stands in solidarity with and offers its support to all individuals and groups that are being subject to violence and hate-crimes. As an organization dedicated to the teaching and learning about East Asia in elementary and secondary schools nationwide, NCTA strives to develop global citizenship based on the principles of cross-cultural understanding, equality, and justice. Full statement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NCT Asia|National Consortium for Teaching about Asia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NCTA is a multi-year initiative to encourage and facilitate teaching and learning about East Asia in elementary and secondary schools nationwide. NCTA is a premier provider of professional development on East Asia courses.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Ai Weiwei: 'An artist must be an activist'" The Guardian (22 Mar 2020)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Ai Weiwei: 'An artist must be an activist'" The Guardian (22 Mar 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
i Weiwei's studio can be found behind unmarked, black metal doors in a grand square in the old east Berlin. You immediately descend two flights of very steep stone stairs before emerging, blinking for light, into a vast, brick-lined cavern that has the proportions of a church. The temperature drops a few degrees. The space was originally, back in the mid-19th century, the cooling warehouses for the Bavarian brewer Joseph Pfeffer. But, since Ai fled China five years ago, this has been his main place of work - and, given that the 62-year-old artist and activist is almost always working, more besides.

"When I'm here, it's like my home," says Ai, who wears a blue hoodie and comfortable shoes, his beard less unruly than it appears in photographs. " Like my home," he clarifies. "I've never had a home. In China, my studio was often destroyed. So for me, it's a shelter - a shelter not so different from refugees in the camps that gradually build up. I can leave, of course, but since 2015, I have stayed here, never had a holiday or weekends. I'm working all the time." His face crinkles into a smile: "I love work."

Ai's output is prolific and diverse. In 2008, he was the artistic consultant for the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, the Bird's Nest. Two years later, he filled the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern with 100m handmade and painted porcelain sunflower seeds. Early in his career, he made a photo series of himself dropping a splendid, 2,000-year-old Han dynasty urn. Recently, he has created several powerful works - installations, video and a documentary - on the refugee crisis. War and its fallout is also the subject of his latest work, History of Bombs.

In China they say, you're born as a nude person, you die as a nude person. You should understand both ends

Until the coronavirus outbreak, Ai's design - a grid of 50 explosive devices from a 1911 grenade to a 2019 guided nuclear missile - was due to cover the floor of the Imperial War Museum London's vast atrium, underneath the suspended Spitfire and Harrier jet, leading visitors to the spring exhibition, Refugees: Forced to Flee.

Now the exhibition is postponed and Ai says when contacted last week: "Cultural institutions are probably the last to be damaged, but the first to show how severely this can affect our understanding about art and culture, which reflect tragic human moments like this. It is very hard to predict the future, but it seems like the situation is not going to be easily resolved and will have a strong impact. All the factors that allowed for this incident still remain the same - this could happen again - and a more thoughtful response in terms of social structure and the philosophical understanding of this situation is required."

Ai's notoriety now of course reaches far beyond the art world. He took the 99-year lease on his Berlin studio in 2010 when he was starting to worry about his safety - his freedom - in China. He was right to be concerned: in April 2011, he was arrested and jailed for 81 days on insubstantial charges. His passport was confiscated and only returned to him in 2015, at which point he came to Germany.

"When a friend showed me the space, it was in a very bad condition," Ai recalls. "That's why nobody wanted it: it's dark, it's wet, it's cold. There's no light down here. So I said: 'I want it.' He was surprised and said: 'Why do you want it?' And I said: 'Because there are so many problems, and I like to solve problems!'"

Before Ai was an artist, he was an architect, and it shows. The studio now has natural light from goodness knows where, and is clinically clean and dry. For the most part, anyway. A while back, he discovered water dripping from the ceiling, so he went to see his upstairs neighbour, the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, about it. "Olafur is my dear friend, but we don't see each other very often, maybe once every three months," says Ai. "So I said: 'Olafur, it's leaking!' And he said: 'Oh, I'm sorry.' And I said: 'No, don't worry, I'll call it a waterfall and when you have the chance, come down to sign it!'"

Those who follow Ai's work and pronouncements might be surprised to learn that he still has a base in Berlin. At the end of last year, he moved with his partner and 10-year-old son to Cambridge. In January, he gave an interview to the Guardian in which he was so excoriating about life in Germany that you might imagine that he would never set foot in the country again. Germans, he said, "deeply don't like foreigners". He went even further: nazism - by his definition, as an ideology that dismisses alternative viewpoints - "perfectly exists in German daily life today".

What has been the reaction to these comments in Germany? "When I chat like this, it is only because journalists ask me and I have to answer," says Ai. "The German response was very heavy, very dark - a form of 'love it or leave it', or 'go back to China' . Or the more intellectual was: 'Oh, it's only a few taxi drivers.' And I said, 'Yes, but that is a long ride.'"

Ai guffaws, but he's totally serious. He has to keep his studio in Berlin for now, but would like to relocate. "I know I would never get a place like this, but so what?" he says. "Many people have to leave their nation barehanded, and maybe before they used to have a palace. In China they say, you're born as a nude person, you die as a nude person. You should understand both ends."

One of the differences Ai sees between the UK and Germany is the engagement with his work and his opinions. He says that he has done more interviews in one week with the British media than in five years with German outlets. "The Hong Kong riots, the corona situation - I thought the German press would ask what we think about it, right?" he says. "I'm not blaming them or asking for this, but it makes me feel kind of like I'm in China, because my name cannot be written."

On the evidence of this feature, a You Ask the Questions special, there is certainly an intense fascination with Ai in Britain (there are also at least a couple of questions from Germany, and submissions from all over the world). The many hundreds of inquiries ranged from his early life (Ai's father Ai Qing was a notable poet who was ostracised for criticising the Maoist regime; the family lived in a cave for five years and his father was made to clean the village toilet) to his opinions on music and food (he's obsessed with one, not the other). At one point Ai stops me mid-sentence and marvels: "You have important questions from a lot of powerful people! Amazing!"

Subject to any further disruption due to coronavirus, IWM plans to open History of Bombs this summer at IWM London as part of IWM's Refugees season.

You have moved to the UK just as we leave the European Union. What does the idea of the nation state mean to you?
If you take a historical view, our map is always changing. It continues to evolve. That might be a king's decision or the people's decision in a democracy. I don't think Brexit is a problem. I've asked many people and Britain is Britain. It has problems, but it's still there and this doesn't add more problems. So it's a time for people to rethink what Britain is and how to survive.

What is the most satisfying thing to you about being an artist?
To not even think that I am an artist has been very satisfying for my work.

In free societies, people often have the romantic feeling that better art is produced in circumstances of hardship. What would you say to that?
This is a tricky question. I would say that many bad artworks have come from circumstances of hardship. But hardship can also be defined as a long period of mental and intellectual struggle.

Marcel Duchamp's work, The Large Glass [also known as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even] looks very casual. Duchamp had the lightest attitude towards art but his mindset was formed over a long time, taking in poetry, French literature, the attitudes of that generation, Dadaism and surrealism. The Large Glass speaks of all of that.

If artists aren't active in the political space, do you think that they are essentially supporting the status quo?
An artist must also be an activist - aesthetically, morally, or philosophically. That doesn't mean they have to demonstrate in street protests, but rather deal with these issues through a so-called artistic language. Without that kind of consciousness - to be blind to human struggle - one cannot even be called an artist.

What is your unrealised project?
That will be death. In my life I have gone through pretty much every single trauma: communism, postmodernism, post-capitalism and globalisation, but the only project I think everyone realises is death. I know nothing about death. I haven't met anybody who has come back to tell me their experience. So I'm waiting for the moment and it will come sooner or later.

I'm happy with the work I've done, even though I have done so little. Often in life you don't get the chance to do what you want. For me, that period lasted almost 45 years: I either didn't know what I wanted to do or I knew what I wanted but I didn't get the chance to do it. But since 2005, when I touched a computer for the first time and started to learn how to type, I began working on the internet and have been reborn. So in the past 15 years, I basically did everything and I'm pretty satisfied. If I have to die now, I have no regrets.

Given you've designed buildings as well as installed art in a whole variety of different spaces, what can artists and architects learn from each other?
This is a bit technical, but I think artists and architects are the same profession, if they're good ones. Even doctors or politicians, they should have vision and they should understand human behaviour and try to offer possibilities for surviving intellectually or physically.

How can art help the plight of refugees?
Art helps human consciousness, art is about individuals' emotions or ideas or concepts relating to a larger cultural definition of who we are. And art can break boundaries: there's no "refugees" or other names, even "terrorists", we're all human. Art tries to illustrate or explain the situation we are in. So in that sense art is dangerous because art doesn't accept any kind of regulation or any kind of principle; instead you have to go to an unknown area. Art helps our human understanding of our situation. Words like "refugee" and "terrorist" are a simplification and those words destroy the humanity.

After creating so many works of art that give voice to the voiceless across the world, I wonder what are the emotions that you find easier to think, write or express in Chinese and what are the emotions you find easier to think, write or express in English? I am curious what is your relationship with each language, and how do they differ, if at all, emotionally.
For Chinese readers, the sensitivity and storytelling about common feelings and people's everyday behaviour are the most effective. For western readers, since I was not raised in the west, my arguments are more about matters of ethics and philosophy. Rationality is easier for any audience to understand.

What steps do you think can we take to persuade European public opinion to be more sympathetic to taking in refugees, especially in Britain?
It's not possible to persuade anybody. You can only warn people what the consequences will be of not doing it. The idea of helping the unfortunate has always existed in most religionsIt's easy to understand but I don't think people will do it in practice. So, in my work, I'd rather warn about wh at will happen if we are not more sympathetic towards refugees. And that's what I'm doing.

Has becoming a parent had an impact on your art?
Lorraine Pink, Australia
Oh yes, definitely it helps me. Whatever I did before is like half of the circle; becoming a parent makes the circle full. So it's very important for me, even if I understand very little about doing it. But still, it's a gift, so you accept that gift. Also, it's only when you become a parent you understand your own parents. That's important, too.

Does music inspire you, and if so what do you listen to?
Anonymous, Japan
Not at all! I wouldn't say that I don't like music, but I have never really turned on music in my life. I have good equipment, I have a lot of musician friends and I have perfect understanding of music. I can analyse music with my musician friends and conductors and they say: "You understand music so well!" But it's like a parallel world in which I'm an alien. When I listen to it, I can rationalise happy emotions, but I don't like music. I like silence. No sound at all. Maybe I belong to death.

Last year you bought 30 tons of buttons from A Brown & Co when the business closed. What plans do you have for them?
Bill Brown, USA
What a pain! We have started to analyse and measure and categorise them. We're still working on that. At the moment, we don't have a plan for them. We never do anything without totally understanding the situation, or at least thinking that we totally understand the situation. We want to find joy, then we can turn it into some other kind of joy.

What I cook depends on what's there when I open the refrigerator. I always find something, but my cooking secret is that I cannot cook the same dish twice. I automatically avoid cooking anything the same. It doesn't matter if it is such a good dish: "Can you redo it?" No, not possible. I see it as art. And I'm not the kind of artist that repeats the same work for 20 years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei: 'An artist must be an activist'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
i Weiwei's studio can be found behind unmarked, black metal doors in a grand square in the old east Berlin. You immediately descend two flights of very steep stone stairs before emerging, blinking for light, into a vast, brick-lined cavern that has the proportions of a church. The temperature drops a few degrees.

# data[].attributes.body
AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai while working as a journalist in China.

# data[].attributes.headline
Neither Nor |Ai Weiwei (13 April - Sept 1 2024) San Gimignano, Italy

# data[].attributes.subject
Neither Nor |Ai Weiwei (13 April - Sept 1 2024) San Gimignano, Italy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Neither Nor | Ai Weiwei | 13/04/2024 | San Gimignano

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fairytale Ai Weiwei 2010  english subtitles

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei: Making Sense (7 April - 30 July 2023) Design Museum, London 

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei: Making Sense (7 April - 30 July 2023) Design Museum, London 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ai Weiwei’s first exhibition focusing on design will mix recent works with commissioned pieces, inviting us into a meditation on value and humanity, art and activism.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei: Resetting memories (13 April - 6 Oct 2019) University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei: Resetting memories (13 April - 6 Oct 2019) University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Todos los materiales disponibles en este sitio tales como obras literarias y artísticas, textos, gráficos, logotipos, iconos, imágenes, audio clips, descargas digitales, compilación de datos y software son propiedad de sus autores, titulares y/o proveedores de contenidos y están protegidos por las leyes del copyright o derecho de autor y los tratados internacionales sobre la materia. dichos materiales se han colocado en el sitio con el único propósito de que el usuario los observe y obtenga información, por lo que queda estrictamente prohibido a todo usuario de esta página el descargar o transmitir dichos materiales por vía electrónica así como utilizarlos y/o reproducirlos por cualquier medio impreso electrónico o mecánico, incluyendo el almacenamiento de datos y los sistemas de recuperación, grabación, impresión o fotocopiado. al visitar este sitio usted conoce y acepta que las legislaciones y tratados mencionados rigen las condiciones de uso del mismo y se sujeta, automáticamente, a las penas y sanciones establecidas en los ordenamientos legales relativos y aplicables.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei. In Search of Humanity (16 Mar - 4 Sept 2022) Albertina Modern, Vienna

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei. In Search of Humanity (16 Mar - 4 Sept 2022) Albertina Modern, Vienna

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Search of Humanity deals in depth with the aspects of humanity and artistic commentary in the work of Ai Weiwei. His earliest works were already characterized by an examination of his native China, where he experienced the effects of the Cultural Revolution as a child through the exile of his father, the great poet Ai Qing.

# data[].attributes.body
Interview with Ai Weiwei conducted in Sept 2011, following his detention.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei in "Change" - Season 6 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

# data[].attributes.headline
"Review: Ai Weiwei Gets the Big Retrospective He Deserves, for Better and For Worse" ARTnews (9 June 2022)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Review: Ai Weiwei Gets the Big Retrospective He Deserves, for Better and For Worse" ARTnews (9 June 2022)

# data[].attributes.body
Review of Albertina Modern's exhibition 'Ai Weiwei. In Search of Humanity' (16 March - 4 Sept 2022)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei Gets the Big Retrospective He Deserves, For Better and For Worse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the Albertina Modern, Ai Weiwei is currently having his biggest retrospective to date.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
PBS FRONTLINE: Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
China's first global art star is pushing the boundaries of freedom. How far can he go? 

First aired on PBS FRONTLINE in March 2011. Here's their page dedicated to this short film, with lots of extras to explore: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ai-wei-wei/

Featured on Short of the Week: https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2011/05/20/whos-afraid-of-ai-wei-wei/

Check out my very rare on-screen cameo in the beginning of this one, speaking in Mandarin to the taxi driver

# data[].attributes.headline
Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei by Barnaby Martin (2013)

# data[].attributes.subject
Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei by Barnaby Martin (2013)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, by Barnaby Martin – review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This account, based on illicit interviews, reveals an artist weakened by incarceration, but a figurehead still for one of the world’s most vital cultural movements, says Isabel Hilton

# data[].attributes.body
On December 15, 2008, a citizens' investigation began with the goal of seeking an explanation for the casualties of the Sichuan earthquake that happened on May 12, 2008. This documentary is a structural element of the citizens' investigation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 10 year anniversary of the 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei - Dumbass (Heavy Metal Music Video)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Ai Weiwei's work, there is no division between art and politics. Throughout his career, the artist has never shied away from difficult truths and has resolutely fought for freedom of expression. Through sculpture, film, installation, photography and architecture - and across an array of materials including ceramics, marble, paint and tea - he has campaigned for human rights with works dealing with oppression, commemoration and Chinese identity and social history, as poignant as they are provocative. Find out more about Ai Weiwei's life and work in our beginner's guide.

Here, we take a quick look at 13 key works throughout his career.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei: 13 works to know | Exhibition | Royal Academy of Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ai Weiwei has worked in everything from paint to readymades. As our landmark exhibition examines work from 1993 up to the present day, we take a look at some of the key works to know from across Ai's career.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
AI Weiwei 艾 未 未 | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ai is an artist-activist whose practice questions existing power systems and reflects his advocacy for human rights and free expression.

# data[].attributes.headline
Wang Keping, sculptor talks about The Stars Art Group

# data[].attributes.subject
Wang Keping, sculptor talks about The Stars Art Group

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wang Keping, sculptor, talking about The Stars Art Group

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Vivos - Documentary by Ai Weiwei - Official Trailer

# data[].attributes.headline
"Happiness and sadness always coexist" (2020)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Happiness and sadness always coexist" (2020)

# data[].attributes.body
Two of Ai Weiwei's films merged into one by Omni.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Happiness and sadness always coexist': Ai Weiwei's first virtual reality artwork Omni

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983 - 1993, Exhibit and Book | Gail Pellett Productions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Review of Ai Weiwei’s photograph exhibit at New York Asia’s Society and published in book form.

# data[].attributes.body
The Wharol , Pittsburgh (4 June - 11 Sept 2016)

National Gallery Victoria, Melbourne (11 Dec 2015 - 24 April 2016)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei | The Andy Warhol Museum

# data[].attributes.body
February 11, 2007 rescue of 400-500 cats by Tianjin's Small Animal Protection Association. (No English subtitles)

# data[].attributes.body
Documentary about Yang Jia who was arrested in Shanghai, beaten, and eventually executed for killing policemen in October 2007.

# data[].attributes.headline
Poetry and Politics of Ai Qing - session slides

# data[].attributes.subject
Poetry and Politics of Ai Qing - session slides

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Qing poems and quotes from 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Qing poems and quotes from 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Qing poems and quotes from 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Selected Poems by Ai Qing: 9780593240724 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A timeless, visionary collection of poems from one of China’s most acclaimed poets—now available in English for the first time in a generation and featuring a foreword by his son, contemporary…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Turandot, Act 3-Placido Domingo, Eva Marton 1987 Met

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei's Turandot Documentary Trailer (2025)

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei's Turandot Documentary Trailer (2025)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei's Turandot - Documentary Trailer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and activist. He has been vocal and openly critical of the Chinese government's stance on democracy and human rights. His work has captured global attention and served to bring attention to social injustices, human rights violations and systemic violence. Ai never shies away from saying what he truly feels and he encourages people to state exactly what they want. And that's what he did in his project Study of Perspective.

Study of Perspective

Study of Perspective is a photographic series produced by Ai Weiwei between 1995 and 2017. Throughout the series, viewers see Ai's left arm extended forward with the middle finger raised to significant institutions, landmarks and monuments from around the world. These pictures mimic tourists' photos and encourage people to question their adherence and acceptance towards governments, institutions and establishments. This series speaks out about Ai's beliefs regarding freedom of speech, empowerment of the people, and democratic values and showcases his activist side in true colors.

The meaning of the work

Most of the time, the institutions he is pointing towards are the ones that tend to stop or abide by free speech, people empowerment or the democratic values in our society. Ai constantly shows a reminder that we need to represent our own values and not those created by others. Instead of using a flat surface to showcase his ideas, the artist focuses on the idea of interjecting his photos with a way to protest against many of the things that go wrong in China and other countries. That's why he only points at buildings, not at people. He understands that people are the ones that will be able to change things and move them around in a truly interesting manner.

Different locations

The first in this series was shot in Tiananmen Square in 1995, where during the 1989 democracy movement protests, hundreds to thousands of unarmed protesters were killed. In Study of Perspective - Tiananmen Square, the photo first appears to be a classic tourist photo in which Ai sticks his middle finger up at Tiananmen Square Gate. This offensive gesture reveals Ai's disdain for the Communist China rulers and what they stood for. Other landmarks featured in Ai's series include the White House in Capitol Hill, Washington D.C., the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and The Reichstag in Berlin. The gesture is the focal point of the photo, as the objects closer to the eye appear larger. Thus his statement is the key point in the image.

Consequences

The series achieved worldwide recognition following Ai posting the images on his blog (2005-2009). Due to its popularity, Ai was detained and questioned at length in 2011 by the Chinese police, with all the questions, pointed towards the Tiananmen photo. Following Ai's detention, other people began to post similar images of themselves on the internet as a signal of solidarity. His work has not only brought attention to a number of social issues but has garnered support and inspired other activities. Of course, the Tiananmen photo is totally banned from appearing in any Chinese media.

Conclusion

Study of Perspective will help you double think about your allegiances and re-adjust your feelings regarding many important institutions in our society.

'Study of perspective' photos

In Australia

Middlefinger sculpture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
About Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and activist. He has been vocal and openly critical of the Chinese government's stance on democracy and human rights. His work has captured global attention and served to bring attention to social injustices, human rights violations and systemic violence.

# data[].attributes.headline
Good Fences, Make Good Neighbors (Interactive map)

# data[].attributes.subject
Good Fences, Make Good Neighbors (Interactive map)

# data[].attributes.body
"Disturbing the Peace" is a documentary of an incident during Tan Zuoren's trial on August 12, 2009. Tan Zuoren was charged with "inciting subversion of state power". Chengdu police detained witnessed during the trial of the civil rights advocate, which is an obstruction of justice and violence.

# data[].attributes.body
*This film contains graphic footage.

On May 12, 2008, Sichuan province suffered a devastating earthquake with thousands of deaths and many more injured and displaced. Ai acquired many tons of the twisted rebar, sending the material to his studio in Beijing where craftsmen meticulously straightened each piece of rebar.

# data[].attributes.body
Over 5,000 students in primary and secondary schools perished in the earthquake May 12, 2008 earthquake, yet their names went unannounced. As of September 2, 2009, there were 4,851 names confirmed. This video is a tribute to these perished students and a memorial for innocent lives lost.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei Exhibit Shines Light on Time as Political Prisoner (2013) Venice Biennale

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei Exhibit Shines Light on Time as Political Prisoner (2013) Venice Biennale

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei Exhibit Shines Light On Time As Political Prisoner

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ai Weiwei, the world-renowned Chinese artist and dissident, has created a deeply autobiographical work for the Venice Biennale exhibit. It is a series of dioramas about his life as a political prisoner, when he was jailed for criticizing the corruption and shoddy construction that caused the deaths of 5,000 children when schools collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

# data[].attributes.headline
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei describes his 81 days in prison - and the extreme surveillance, censorship, and 'soft detention' he's endured since (20 Dec 2018) Artspace

# data[].attributes.subject
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei describes his 81 days in prison - and the extreme surveillance, censorship, and 'soft detention' he's endured since (20 Dec 2018) Artspace

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
According to CNN, if the American prison population were its own city, it would be the fifth largest city in America, with a population larger than Phoenix or Philadelphia. In the U.S. there are almost 2.3 million people behind bars-more than any other country in the world throughout history.

Clearly, mass incarceration in the U.S. is out of control. It's become so catastrophic that even President Trump supports reform; he's publically backed the First Step Act. This bill, which the Senate passed on Tuesday night, will soften some federally mandatory minimum sentences, provide funding for rehabilitation and re-entry programs. While the bill only modestly tweaks the federal criminal justice system (not the state and local systems that largely account for America's prison problem), it's definitely a step in the right direction. Amusingly, Trump supports criminal-justice reform while his supporters continue to chant "lock her up" at rallies in regards to political opponents like Hillary Clinton, and recently, Dianne Feinstein.

Hopefully, the U.S. government never reaches a point where it actually locks up those that oppose its policy-like in China. In 2011, the Chinese government imprisoned artist and outspoken critic of the communist regime, Ai Weiwei, during a government crackdown that targeted dozens of bloggers, human rights lawyers, and writers. CLOG, an international publication that critically explores a single topic through numerous multi-faceted perspectives, interviewed Ai Weiwei back in 2014 for their issue CLOG: Prisons.

As we bask in the small victory of passing the First Step Act, we've excerpted CLOG's interview with the artist about his time in prison. Here, Ai Weiwei opens up about his experience in prison, the relationship between imprisonment and surveillance, and the role of architecture in the prison industrial complex.

The 'Prisons' Issue of CLOG. Image via CLOG.
CLOG in conversation with Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei at his Beijing studio on February On April 3, 2011, you were arrested by police at the Beijing Capital International Airport and subsequently placed in detention for 81 days. Can you please describe this experience, and the space in which you were detained? 26, 2014.
Oh, it would be a long talk. I can only really tell you the basic conditions. I was waiting in line to go through customs, and they stopped me and told me to go to another place to have a talk. They were wearing plain clothes, so I knew they were secret police. What I wasn't prepared for was when they led me to a van, put a black hood over my head, and started to drive. In about two hours, we arrived. I could sense that we'd arrived somewhere because the car kept stopping, meaning there was a gate.

When the car started again, I knew that we had been checked by security, and then I was led upstairs by two guards, one on each side-because I could not see anything. The funny thing is they first moved me upstairs and then realized that the room was downstairs, so we came downstairs again. They told me to sit, and then they took off my blindfold...

After some time, I was blindfolded again and moved to a second location. When they took off my blindfold this time, I was in a room measuring 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) by 7.2 meters (23.6 feet). I could tell from the size of the floor tiles. It was a very simple bathroom, and the whole room was wrapped in soft cushion or soft white foam which was taped roughly on the wall, to secure the space to prevent you from killing yourself. Even the toilet was wrapped with soft materials. But it was a very clean room with nothing in there, only a white armchair for me to sit in. The entire chair was wrapped with soft materials, and my left hand was handcuffed to the armrest. There were two metal chairs for the interrogators to sit on. There was a small office table, and two soldiers stood in front of me about 80 centimeters (31 inches) away. They stared at me all the time, almost without ever blinking, emotionless. There was no window. I could tell whether it was day or night though, because there was a fan in the wall and I could see light through the hole of the fan. So that's basically the conditions I were in.

There was no exercise outside of that room. I could ask for permission to have a walk inside the room on six floor tiles. Each tile was 60 centimeters (2 feet) by 60 centimeters, so walking, that was 3.60 meters (11.8 feet) by 60 centimeters. Basically, my daily activities were sitting, being interrogated, walking, taking showers, and sleeping.

The building, of course, was top secret, used by the state to detain so-called top criminals or enemies, people like me detained mainly for economic crimes and sensitive political cases. The security and the secrecy level was very high, but later through a very difficult process I managed to find the location on Google Maps. [Laughs]
Where is it?
Ai Weiwei sitting in a replica of his prison cell. Image via Smithsonian Magazine.
What did it smell like?
It's in Beijing in a very public, populated location. Through the fan hole, I could hear women or children chatting and passing by, though I could not tell what they were saying. Based on these sounds, though, I realized that I wasn't in a military base or jail. And I could tell that the building only had two levels based on the pipelines-there was no water system above the bathroom, meaning I was on the top floor with nobody above me.
What did it sound like?
The smells in the beginning scared me. When I moved in, I smelled a very strong chemical, like something used to clean up a body or blood. You smell that in the operation room in the old hospitals. That smell still remains a mystery, though it might have been because of the beatings... not me, but I found out later from the guards how they treat other prisoners. I don't know if they were saying this to intimidate me, but they told me that the others are beaten, told to take off their clothes in front of an air conditioner turned to the lowest level, and are questioned in front of the cold air. You cannot hold on with that.

Just the fans, twenty-four hours a day. That started to create a not loud, but high-pitched sound, which eventually created a kind of illusion. Like, I could hear thousands of people singing together. And they never stopped singing, twenty-four hours a day. You start to have... hallucinations.
Were the lights always on?
So they gave me pills. I had never seen pills like that so I would ask the doctor what they were. The doctors would say, "It's to fix your nerves." That was very suspicious. But the doctor came three times a day, and sometimes seven times a day. It felt a little bit like a laboratory.
Did you ever see what was outside the door?
Always. Very low, sad lights. But on twenty-four hours a day. There were also three surveillance cameras, one on each corner of the room and another in the bathroom. They covered the entire room to make sure the guards could not talk to me. They're soldiers, 20 years old, and they never left this building. They arrived on post secretly. Two or three years later, they'll secretly transfer out to another poor province. So everything they do in Beijing is in this room. Every two hours when they change shifts and leave the room, two other guards search them outside the door, making sure they don't bring out anything.
When you were released, did they put the hood back on?
No, the purpose of this kind of detention is to cut off any sense of anything you understand or know or remember from the past. They're really successful at that. The only sense of the outside came after they asked me if I wanted anything, and I said I needed coat hangers because I wanted to wash my underwear and socks, and I needed hangers to dry them. Otherwise you have to leave things on the back of the chair. So out of mercy, they brought me six blue plastic coat hangers; you know the cheap things you can find in the markets. Of course, the next day when the soldiers came in they all shook their heads, saying that this was impossible, that something like this could be brought into a jail cell.

Yes, of course. They had to protect that compound. I still found out where it was though, and later on I told the police who detained me, "You know, I know where it is, where I was detained." He asked where. I told him the address. He was shocked. He said, "I never heard about this. Don't tell me that." I went back there once and took some photos outside the door. It looks normal, like nothing special.
How did it feel when you left such a controlled environment and reentered the world?
Image via The Daily Beast.
We're accustomed to inhabiting spaces where there is almost always some surface material that allows you to see yourself...
It's like coming out of a satellite. After being released, they first brought me to a normal police station. I said I wanted to go to the bathroom. They took me to the bathroom, and I saw my image in the mirror for the first time. That really shocked me... the most shocking image I can remember is seeing myself in the mirror.
How did this experience impact your thoughts on space and architecture?
If there had been a mirror in my cell it would have been a very different experience. Being able to see any kind of reflection-even a distorted image-would change your whole perspective.
Is it therefore morally wrong, in your opinion, for an architect to design a prison?
I now think there's no space or architecture really designed for inmates. Rather, places like where I was detained are designed for control. When you're a prisoner, your sense of existence is completely destroyed. Prisons are often designed not as a shelter to protect the law or to provide security, but rather to make the humanity of the prisoner disappear. They do not consider the very basic needs of a human being. It's overwhelmingly powerful. Prisons make sure you understand the treatment of space as a punishment. This is an insult to all humanity.
So who do you hold responsible for the environment in which you were detained for 81 days?
I don't think so. I think architects should design anything. There's no "morally wrong" or "not wrong," but just how well you design. Space is a huge part of any society, and someone has to design it. And whoever designs it is an architect.
Right here, surrounding your studio?
It reflects the whole society. There's a very clear definition of what a prisoner is. You're being controlled, and you're vulnerable. You're being watched. Your activities are being carefully monitored, and they can get to you at any time. This situation can be experienced in a small physical space like a cell or in a much larger environment as a so-called free person. Why, we have two buildings next to us right now, built just for watching us at all times.

Yes. And there are twenty cameras around our yard. And the phone is tapped. The computer is checked. This is a kind of soft detention.

When I walk in the park I see secret police behind books, bushes, taking photos. If I go to the restaurant they check every table. The whole society is about control, about how much they know and how fast they can get to you.
So we're in this beautiful space and you have your home, your work, your garden, your collaborators, your cats... do you feel that you're living in a prison?
The picture that [Edward] Snowden revealed is scary. It shows that even a democratic society like the United States still has no trust in its own people, and it keeps secrets files on people. It brings into question the so-called civilized world. This is morally wrong.
You mentioned two buildings built by the authorities adjacent to this property.
Actually, when I built this house, my mom visited, and the first thing she said was that it was like a prison. [Laughs] You know, people's ideas about space are so different. I think what made her compare this to a prison was its isolation from the neighborhood and the style. This is interesting. Living in a prison is not about the walls, the bars, the windows, or the security guards, but rather how closely you are being watched by authority. When you're being stared at by a vicious animal, it scares you, because they keep staring. And you know, they do that because they want to have the next move. [Laughs]. We all accept that we are being carefully watched here.
Are there ways you escape your current soft detention-if not literally then psychological-such as when you listened to the sounds of the women and children through the wall fan during your detention?
Image of Ai Weiwei's studio in Beijing, China (2014). Image via CLOG.

Yes, in front of this building. Regulations do not allow four-story-high buildings in this area, but they built a four story building. This is how I know it was built by the authorities. They wanted to look down into our garden. Actually, this is a game every powerful state plays. Even the United States plays it, like at Watergate during Nixon's time or even today, with the U.S. being accused of listening to the German Chancellor's conversations. It's like a card game, but they know what cards you have in your hand. I think this kind of cheating is unspeakable. China does it in the most obvious way, but I'm sure all authorities do it. They think they're more powerful than you. In fact, there should not be any higher power than the individual. In reality, it's very different.
How do you intend to address through your future work the issues discussed today?
Yes. So long as you maintain some connection to reality, this type of detention doesn't really work. If I see a cat passing by, if I can look at that door and know that it will open when I turn the handle... these things destroy the state's psychological control. Sometimes I remember what Wittgenstein said: "A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push." Soft detention requires your participation. For example, you always have to remind people you're being watched. When people call me on the phone, the first sentence I will say is, "this phone is being tapped." I'm afraid because if they don't know, they can get in trouble when they say something privately to me. Soon, you realize very few people will call you. For me, it's fine, but you can see in this case soft detention really works well.

But maybe that camera in front of my door is never even turned on. One time, a big truck hit the camera, and the camera turned to another angle. For a month, nobody came to fix it. If somebody had been watching on the other end, it would have been fixed the next day. In the 1990s, China used to put sculptures of policemen standing next to highways and streets. They scared most drivers, who didn't know they were sculptures. Propaganda works. Brainwashing works. Intimidation works.

It is very difficult to work in a society like China's. Basically my work is not exposed to the public here. Most of my work is seen in the West today. My name cannot even appear on the Internet in China. They will simply delete it. At the same time, the state is so powerful, but is scared of an individual like me, who only tries to free himself.
Do you have any idea whether or not these other people have had experiences similar to yours?
For the upcoming exhibition on Alcatraz in San Francisco, we have been focusing on the experience of different kinds of political prisoners around the world, people who have been put away only because they have an opinion, or because they peacefully exercised their rights or expressed themselves. Can a society afford to silence those people who have different ideas? This is a disaster for society, and it needs to be consciously and publicly discussed.
In the end, what is the role of architecture in relation to all of this?
I have no clear political intentions, only the exercise of my essential rights. But of course, I protect those rights through public expression, by sharing information, by letting people know how this world looks like or at least how my reality is. This is a very important task for me. It is my job. I have to do it. It is my duty. And I have to consider myself one of the lucky ones. So many people-writers, poets, journalists-have been put behind bars simply because they freely exercised their rights or expressed their concerns.
And how is art different?
My experience is unique because the authorities somehow see me as some kind of very dangerous person. Others are treated as normal criminals. The police will have two dozen people sleeping in one big bed, so you cannot even turn. There's also a lot of "self-punishment" in these normal cells. There are hierarchies inside, involving who is the boss and who is the newcomer. You can always be physically or psychologically abused. It's a little dark society.
One final question. Your father, the poet Ai Qing, was imprisoned in 1932 for opposing the Kuomintang in Shanghai...
I think of architects as very strange creatures. Architecture is only half intellectual and mostly just practical. There is only a small intellectual side to the profession, and it very rarely involves moral judgment. Sometimes architects think they are so powerful because they make something happen, like a god, but of course it's always plagued by politics and money. It's not so stable.

Art can be very different. You don't have to be in the commercial world. Many artists don't sell a piece in their lifetime. But architects, you work for somebody to use it, you know?
RELATED ARTICLES:
Yes. Today I was reading early poetry he wrote in prison. He started writing poems at this time. The first day I was detained, I remember telling the police that it reminded me of my father. They told me that today it is different. Then later, I realized that yes, it is very different. My father still could write poetry in prison and send it out to be published. But today in China, you cannot. Even your family doesn't know where you are. You have no lawyer. You have no way to send out anything, not even a toothpick.
Ai <3 NY: A Guide to Ai WeiWei's NYC Takeover
[related-works-module]

"Make Tea Not War": Eight Examples of 21st-Century Protest Art

Art Vs. Trump: 40 Creative Acts Of Resistance Since Inauguration Day

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Describes His 81 Days in Prison-And the Extreme Surveillance, Censorship, and "Soft Detention" He's Endured Since

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to CNN, if the American prison population were its own city, it would be the fifth largest city in America, with a population larger than Phoenix or Philadelphia. In the U.S. there are almost 2.3 million people behind bars-more than any other country in the world throughout history.

# data[].attributes.headline
#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei | Hampstead Theatre (2013)

# data[].attributes.subject
#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei | Hampstead Theatre (2013)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei | Hampstead Theatre | 2013

# data[].attributes.body
A sequel to Disturbing The Peace, the film So Sorry (named after the artist’s 2009 exhibition in Munich, Germany) shows the beginnings of the tension between Ai Weiwei and the Chinese Government.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 10 year anniversary of the 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake

# data[].attributes.headline
@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz (27 Sept 2014 - 26 April 2015)

# data[].attributes.subject
@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz (27 Sept 2014 - 26 April 2015)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world’s treasures online.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Documentary film about Ai Weiwei’s project Yours Truly inspires action in the struggle for human rights at home and abroad. Directed by Cheryl Haines.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Lego refusing to sell bricks to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was a mistake" The Guardian (28 April 2016)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Lego refusing to sell bricks to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was a mistake" The Guardian (28 April 2016)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lego's vice-chairman has called his company's refusal to sell its bricks to Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei an "internal mistake".

Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the grandson of the founder, told the Wall Street Journal that the company's decision last year to decline a bulk order made on behalf of the artist, on the grounds that supporting his Melbourne exhibition would contravene "corporate policy", was made by a very low-level employee.

"It was an internal mistake," Kristiansen said, adding that Lego's board was not involved, and that the decision had been made by an employee from the consumer service department who misinterpreted the company policy of political neutrality.

After Lego's initial refusal, Ai retaliated by reposting the company's letter on Instagram with a photo of a toilet bowl clogged with the toy bricks. He wrote that the Danish company's refusal to sell its product was "an act of censorship and discrimination".

He then received millions of donated Lego pieces from supporters around the world.

In an interview with The Guardian he compared big companies like Lego to his traditional sparring partner, the Chinese Communist party. They had the "same kind of bureaucracy, same kind of ignorance" and found it difficult to "change their line", even when mistakes have been made, he said.

"They have to stand by them because losing even one piece can collapse the whole structure," Ai said.

Kristiansen denied the refusal was influenced by commercial considerations in China and said freedom of expression was important to the company.

His son and successor, Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, said maintaining political neutrality remained a core value of the company, but admitted that refusing the artist's request could also be interpreted as taking a political position.

An error had been made, he agreed: "It is a typical example of what can go wrong in a big company."

In January Lego dropped its restrictions on bulk orders, saying it would stop asking people why they wanted its bricks. Customers wanting to build public displays out of Lego bricks would now only have to make clear that the company does not endorse the project.

Ai told the Wall Street Journal he welcomed Lego's about-face, but added: "They recognised it a bit too late."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lego: refusing to sell bricks to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was a mistake

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lego's vice-chairman has called his company's refusal to sell its bricks to Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei an "internal mistake". Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the grandson of the founder, told the Wall Street Journal that the company's decision last year to decline a bulk order made on behalf of the artist, on the grounds that supporting his Melbourne exhibition would contravene "corporate policy", was made by a very low-level employee.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Famous Dissidents Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum Stuff Panda Bears with N.S.A. Documents" from Artnet (9 June 2015)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Famous Dissidents Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum Stuff Panda Bears with N.S.A. Documents" from Artnet (9 June 2015)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Famous Dissidents Ai Weiwei and Jacob Applebaum Stuff Panda Bears with N.S.A. Documents | Artnet News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Filmmaker Laura Poitras captures Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei and technologist Jacob Applebaum working on their new art project.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Art of Dissent: Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum (2015)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Art of Dissent: Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum (2015)

# data[].attributes.body
Laura Poitras documents the dissidents Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum as they collaborate on an art project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Art of Dissent: Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum | Op-Docs | The New York Times

# data[].attributes.headline
"Ai Weiwei's Lego classics are much more than playful reproduction" Art Critique (20 Dec 2023)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Ai Weiwei's Lego classics are much more than playful reproduction" Art Critique (20 Dec 2023)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Art Basel has become the annual mecca for the year's oddball artistic offering. From Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian to MSCHF's ATM Leaderboard, it is a home for statements in surprising formats. While there has seemingly been a lack of a true headline-maker with intrigue buzzing for it, there's still a spirit of playfulness to be found in the likes of Ai Weiwei's Lego masterpieces.

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist, human rights activist and dissident with a history of speaking out against the regime in his country. This thread in his life traces back to his father, poet Ai Qing, who was exiled to Shihezi in 1961 and forced into physical labour due to his "rightist" values, resulting in a hard life for his family. Ai was arrested in 2011 on several counts of "economic crimes" and detained for months without an official charge. He came out of the experience all the more vocal in his works as a documentarian, architect, and modern artist, his practice encompassing film, photography, and sculpture and his works often depicting a dichotomy of his home country through repurposed Chinese historical objects in modern socio-political contexts.

Now, a massive recreation of Giorgione's Sleeping Venus adorns the walls of Art Basel, built brick by brick. It is joined by a recreation of Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware. Ai Weiwei's Lego works are an interesting offering in the artist's history, whose pieces often have a stark essence and muted palette to them. Yet these works, striking in the same compositional manner that their originals are, are given a jolt of playful essence just by the awareness of their core material.

But it isn't for the sake of entertainment that he is using the classic children's toy for these projects. Having first started working with Lego in 2014, he sought to meld the grand air of these historically significant works and the consumerist modernism inherent to the iconic toy bricks. What's more, these are not true replications, as Ai has put his own statements in each-a clothes hanger next to Venus, indicative of abortion rights, and Beijing's National Stadium in the distance from Washington, speaking to his experience designing the building only to have it spur on intense security operations, as well as the Chinese/America relations.

Certainly not evoking the same essence of mischievous play that we've seen the last few years at Art Basel, Ai Weiwei's Lego recreations are perhaps indicative of a positive trajectory. Utilization of novel techniques in an attempt to speak to pertinent current issues, and not easily overshadowed by their form. With the vice grip of NFT culture finally loosening and a desire for substance in dire times, Ai's work may be just what this year's event needed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei's Lego classics are much more than playful reproduction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art Basel has become the annual mecca for the year's oddball artistic offering. From Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian to MSCHF's ATM Leaderboard, it is a home

# data[].attributes.body
Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads is the centerpiece of a global, multi-year touring exhibition that will be presented in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads Public Sculpture.

# data[].attributes.body
Scholarly essays and curriculum from MIT's Visualizing Cultures project in three parts.

# data[].attributes.body
Artisan Ai Weiwei employs traditional porcelain techniques to create sunflower seeds, sparking curiosity and questions about art. The production process involves a community in Jingdezhen, a town known for its porcelain. The sunflower seeds symbolize loyalty to the party during Chairman Mao's era, adding a historical dimension to this contemporary art piece. Created by Tate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei – Sunflower Seeds | Artist Interview | Tate

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.body
"Coronation" is a documentary film about the lockdown in Wuhan, China, during the Covid-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Coronation" (2020) is a documentary film about the lockdown in Wuhan, China, during the Covid-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020.  On December 1, 2019, the first patient with Covid-19 symptoms was identified in Wuhan. Chinese officials repeatedly denied that human-to-human transmission was possible, concealed the number of diagnosed patients, and punished medical staff for disclosing information about the epidemic. On January 23, 2020, Wuhan was placed under a city-wide lockdown. Covid-19 has become a global pandemic, with over 22 million people infected and over 780,000 deaths. "Coronation" examines the political specter of Chinese state control from the first to the last day of the Wuhan lockdown. The film records the state's brutally efficient, militarized response to control the virus. Sprawling emergency field hospitals were erected in a matter of days, 40,000 medical workers were bused in from all over China, and the city's residents were sealed into their homes. The film takes us into the heart of these temporary hospitals and ICU wards, showing the entire process of diagnosis and treatment. Patients and their families are interviewed, reflecting their thinking about the pandemic and expressing anger and confusion over the state's callous restriction of their liberties. The film also takes us into the private lives of individuals living under the lockdown: a couple attempt to return to their home in Wuhan, a courier delivers essentials to residents barred from leaving their community, an emergency construction worker stuck in limbo is forced to live out of his car, a former party cadre and her son debate the function of the media and the party's response to the outbreak, a grieving son navigates the bureaucracy of retrieving his father's ashes. China has assumed the status of superpower on the global stage, yet it remains poorly understood by other nations. Through the lens of the pandemic, "Coronation" clearly depicts the Chinese crisis management and social control machine-through surveillance, ideological brainwashing, and brute determination to control every aspect of society. The film shows the changes that took place in a city and in individual space under the impact of the virus; it illustrates the value of individual life in the political environment, reflecting on the difficulties we face as individuals and countries in the context of globalization. Ultimately, the result is a society lacking trust, transparency, and respect for humanity. Despite the impressive scale and speed of the Wuhan lockdown, we face a more existential question: can civilization survive without humanity? Can nations rely on one another without transparency or trust? Ai Weiwei remotely directed and produced the film from Europe. The filming was done by ordinary citizens living in Wuhan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Coronation" (2020) is a documentary film about the lockdown in Wuhan, China, during the Covid-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020. On December 1, 2019, the first patient with Covid-19 symptoms was identified in Wuhan. Chinese officials repeatedly denied that human-to-human transmission was possible, concealed the number of diagnosed patients, and punished medical staff for disclosing information about the epidemic.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei MASK month-long charity initiative raises over $1.4m (13 July 2020)

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei MASK month-long charity initiative raises over $1.4m (13 July 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Ai Weiwei MASK art project, launched on 21 May in collaboration with eBay for Charity, raised over $1.4 million over its month-long run – the most raised…

# data[].attributes.headline
Ai Weiwei has 81 questions for AI (2024)

# data[].attributes.subject
Ai Weiwei has 81 questions for AI (2024)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei Has 81 Questions for Artificial Intelligence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some of the questions are political, some philosophical, and some—like whether or not AI can draw an eight-breasted tiger—are a little absurd.

# data[].attributes.headline
Don't Follow the Wind | Radioactive Art in Fukushima (2015-2022)

# data[].attributes.subject
Don't Follow the Wind | Radioactive Art in Fukushima (2015-2022)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Radioactive Art in Fukushima | Don’t Follow the Wind

# data[].attributes.headline
"Ai Weiwei at Kettle's Yard - a story of faith and fakes" Financial Times (15 Feb 2022)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Ai Weiwei at Kettle's Yard - a story of faith and fakes" Financial Times (15 Feb 2022)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei at Kettle’s Yard — a story of faith and fakes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The artist’s show in Cambridge combines authentic artefacts with forgeries and his own artworks

# data[].attributes.body
Includes clips from: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Fairytale, Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly, and Beijing Spring

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ai Weiwei_Art and poetry gallery activity

# data[].attributes.headline
Seattle Asian Art Museum gallery activity

# data[].attributes.subject
Seattle Asian Art Museum gallery activity

# data[].attributes.headline
"From the Archive: the Unseen Artworks of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone" ArtReview (29 March 2016)

# data[].attributes.subject
"From the Archive: the Unseen Artworks of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone" ArtReview (29 March 2016)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Don't Follow the Wind ( DFW) is a currently inaccessible group exhibition of works made in response to the nuclear disaster caused by the melt-through of the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The exhibition opened on 11 March 2015 in the exclusion zone of Fukushima, from which approximately 24,000 residents continue to be displaced by high radiation levels. Besides the exhibition works installed in the spaces provided by former residents, one of the most memorable sights in the zone is the gatelike overhead sign at the entrance of the shopping arcade and one of the main streets of Futaba, the site of the TEPCO power plant, which reads, 'Nuclear Power: Energy for a Bright Future'. The sign, a product of TEPCO's PR efforts and a sad and painfully poignant testament to Futaba's dangerous dependence on the nuclear power industry, is the subject matter of exhibition instigator Chim Pom's work Drawing a Blueprint (2015-). Billed as a clean and efficient energy source, the promotion of nuclear power falls perfectly within what Heidegger called a 'technological enframing'; it has 'the character of calculation'.

In his criticism of DFW, art critic Jonathan Jones argued in The Guardian that the exhibition's highlighting of the manmade nuclear disaster, which has so far killed no one, over the natural earthquake and tsunami disasters, which killed nearly 16,000, is irrational. In fact, in August 2014, a Japanese court determined that TEPCO was responsible for the death of Hamako Watanabe, who suffered depression and committed suicide by self-immolation after the melt-through of the power plant displaced her from her home. Suicide rates remain high in Fukushima, and the physical and psychological effects of long-term exposure to low-level internal radiation remain unknown. To ignore this dimension of the disaster is unethical. The safety of Fukushima and nuclear power, which Jones intently defends, is a myth. And it is within this myth that TEPCO announced on 18 April 2011 that radiation from the power plant would be under control in six to nine months.

DFW urges us to read such myths generated by the mass media, the state and TEPCO against the grain. Taken from the experience of a collaborator and former Fukushima resident, whose passion for fishing allowed him to see that the winds were blowing north and accordingly evacuate his family south, the title is, on one level, an instruction for survival. It also relates metaphorically to the words for 'rumour' (風評) and 'weathering' (風化), which in kanji (Chinese characters used in the modern Japanese writing system) both incorporate the character for 'wind' (風). The exhibition is then simultaneously survival tactic, counterpropaganda and mnemonic device. It constitutes a transmission of counterintelligence, commanding its audience (not viewers) to remember the presentness of the disaster against its disappearance from mainstream media. In cocurator Jason Waite's words, the show simultaneously 'generates data and activates the imagination'. Nikolaus Hirsch and Jorge Otero-Pailos's Becoming Monument (2015-), for example, takes a work of vernacular architecture and treats it as a monument and heritage site. Accordingly, they follow and expand upon UNESCO regulations, periodically metering and publicising radiation levels taken from the surface of the 'monument'.

Ai Weiwei's A Ray of Hope (2015-) is made of solar-powered lights that turn on for five hours daily - once in the evening and once in the early morning, specifically when no one is in the zone - inside a building on one of the exhibition sites. The lights replace residents and create the semblance of life in a hastily abandoned shell of a town. In the absence of residents, the works will also provide historical testimony once the region is reopened. Meanwhile, DFW tactically mobilises 'rumours': a label Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has dismissively applied to various facets of Fukushima's dangers. As the show is currently on, but unopened, one can only imagine, project and generate discourse on what the effects of the exhibition might be and what the works look like and do. And if thinking about DFW and the nuclear disaster is anxiety-provoking, it is so precisely because they cannot be neatly delineated spatially or temporally. These indeterminacies require us to think about time and space in unfamiliar ways. The fact that an exhibition that has started might not be opened in our lifetime challenges us to consider an extraordinary temporality parallel to that of, say, caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years. We cannot know when the show will open, and when it does, the pieces will have been transformed by time and exposure to the elements. It is difficult to identify historical signposts to contextualise the exhibition, but one might consider pieces such as John Cage's composition Organ2/ ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) (1987), a 639-year version of which is currently being performed at St Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, and Yoko Ono's Conversation Piece (1962), which instructed performers to, 'Bandage any part of your body... If people forget about it, remind them of it and keep telling. Do not talk about anything else.' In this light, the works in DFW might best be understood as a kind of durational, and testimonial, social sculpture.

As outsiders, we are at once directly involved and not with the Fukushima disaster. Radiation's invisibility makes its disavowal easy, but its dissemination continues. DFW also propagates fragmentary images, information and rumours, which receivers must actively piece together. The idea of an exclusion zone suggests containment, but both radiation and the idea of DFW defy this logic. The opening of Don't Follow the Wind Non-Visitor Center ( NVC), a satellite exhibition of new works by the same artists in DFW at Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, asks us to consider the meanings of site and nonsite, and the role of art in relation to a global disaster.

In an obvious metaphor for the inaccessibility of DFW, at NVC visitors must walk up makeshift scaffolding from the second floor to peek through a window into the third floor, where the works are displayed. This distance makes assessment of the works difficult. Some, such as Meiro Koizumi's Home (all works 2015), a talking-head video of a former Futaba resident shown without audio, is impenetrable. As it turns out, its counterpart, only audible in the main exhibition site, is a three-minute loop of the same man's imaginary conversation with his wife upon returning to his home. The emotional weight of listening to this conversation while viewing the speaker's dilapidated home is indescribably intense. The exhibited photograph of Trevor Paglen's sculpture Trinity Cube, a minimalist cube made of trinitite, a radioactive glass produced by the 1945 Trinity nuclear bomb test in New Mexico, boxed by glass formed from broken, irradiated windows found in the exclusion zone, is fairly straightforward. The sculpture intertwines the histories of American nuclear technology and current circumstances in Fukushima, pointing to global capital behind the nuclear power industry: TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was built by the US-based power conglomerate General Electric (GE). For now, however, the effect of seeing it onsite after continued irradiation and weathering can only be imagined.

Taryn Simon's Final Photos is accessible online. The work consists of a growing database of the last images captured and shared on social media by Fukushima residents before the disaster, and transmitted from a solar-powered server housed in the art studio of a former resident in the exclusion zone. The two currently uploaded images are haunting. One shows an out-of-focus footbath, about which the author/photographer writes, '¥2,980 at Don Quixote. So cheap!' The utter mundanity of the post highlights the horror and reveals the uncanny effect of the tragedy that would rupture this homely sense of being-in-the-world. And through its simultaneous existence in the exclusion site, in cyberspace and on our computer monitors, Final Photos illustrates the difficulty of locating an information-based work geographically. The exhibitions' organisers similarly reenvision the notion of homelessness as an opportunity for forging temporary horizontal alliances between artists, curators and local residents, whose collaboration was essential in providing homes for the works.

Unviewed works cannot be phenomenologically experienced. They remain information. In the exhibition catalogue, critic and participating artist Noi Sawaragi puzzlingly draws a parallel between radioactivity and the 'true power of art' that transgresses spatial boundaries. In this he seems to want to evoke a sense of the works' aura, which requires presence. In their current inaccessibility, I think we need to admit that the artworks' power is discursively produced. This is precisely why the exhibition remains powerful despite its veri- table absence. The time for experiencing the aura of the works will come as areas of varying levels of radiation are reopened in stages, but the poesis of the durational existence of works in the exclusion zone is no less powerful for being imaginary. It is, as Heidegger suggests, poesis, which mobilises an 'overflow beyond number'. Poesis, he theorised, works in the realm of the invisible, turning us away from technology and towards the open. What else are artists for in a time of darkness such as ours?

This article was first published in ArtReview Asia, vol 4, no 1, 2016.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
From the Archive: the Unseen Artworks of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An inaccessible exhibition, 'Don't Follow the Wind', made in response to the 2011 nuclear disaster, initiated by Japanese collective Chim↑Pom