Ai Weiwei's Blog

Ai Weiwei's Blog. Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006–2009, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets (316 pp., US $24.95)

"Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential."[1]

In the same year that the Chinese Communist Party is celebrating its 90th birthday, patting itself on the back for its battle against an archaic feudal system, China is still an authoritarian state in which any form of dissent or opposition is prohibited both on a personal level as well as on any kind of collective political level. This is the case of the artist Ai Weiwei, recently at the center of international attention after having been arrested by Chinese authorities and incarcerated in an unknown location for 80 days, from April 3 to June 22 with the vague accusation of tax evasion.

Starting from January 2006 and for 29 months, Ai Weiwei kept a blog in which, almost every day, he published thoughts, considerations and images. The blog, hosted on sina.com, was closed by censors on May 28, 2009 and all of its content immediately removed. The book, Ai Weiwei's Blog. Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006–2009, recently published by MIT press, (Cambridge, Massachusetts) collects, translates and publishes, for the first time, a selection from the over 2700 posts. For the moment, it is the most complete documentation of the blog and its content, an instrument that had become the artist's most important means of expression for 4 years and that, in a very short time occupied 90% of his energies.

In the blog and in the book different themes are faced; not only art and culture but also political issues and social criticism from Ai Weiwei's ideas about photography and the value of the image which also obsessed Andy Warhol—"Understand him, and you will understand the United States," he wrote on October 3, 2007—to the concept of architectural space and the rapid transformation of the city of Peking which, in its urban plans, according to Ai Weiwei, was totally lacking the human dimension and scale that the city had always possessed. He also faced controversial issues, criticizing the Chinese Ministry of Culture which he writes about on January 17, 2007, "The Ministry of Culture is the department that least understands culture; it's impossible for them to have any relationship with culture. This is universal principle of the universe, and the great tragedy of Chinese culture;" or again obscure investigations by the Chinese police buried like state secrets, government corruption, the scandal of the fire in the CCTV building in Peking which cost 5 billion Yuan (the equivalent of what was necessary to build two Olympic stadiums) and which burned in only six hours in front of an entire nation without anyone having raised a voice, the market of human organs sadly and widely diffused by the corpses put to death by the death penalty.

The blog also became a place for waging a boycott against the Peking Olympics in 2008, criticized notwithstanding the artist's direct involvement in the construction of the Olympic Stadium, Bird Nest, in collaboration with the Swiss firm Herzog & De Meuron. Above all, it became an instrument for reporting on and making known the investigations by Citizen Investigation, a project initiated with a group of volunteers in March 2009 with which Ai Weiwei pressed the Szechuan government to probe the responsibility for the collapse of school buildings during the Wenchuan earthquake which had caused the death of thousands of young students.

Citizen Investigation published a list of names on the blog of over 5000 students—immediately removed by censors. With the simple gesture of having published the names of the victims, he gave them dignity and respect, saving their families from the general indifference shown by the Chinese government. "Our reasoning behind this investigation is to achieve the very lowest level of respect for the deceased. The most fundamental worth and civil right of any person is their right to their name; this name is the smallest, most basic unit that helps us attest to an individual's existence," he wrote on March 24, 2009. These thoughts had already been expressed on the blog, for example on January 7, 2007 when Ai Weiwei, writing about the death penalty, speaks about the uniqueness of every life, "Each person's life is added to the lives of others to compose an inseparable whole that is the life of humanity. The value of life originates from the fact that we each have only one chance. Life is irreversible, unique, unpredictable."

This book opens a new way for us to understand modern China, a society that is still very distant but increasingly present in our lives. It reminds us, in Ai Weiwei's words in the Citizen Investigation appeal that, "Your actions create your world." A great lesson in democracy, freedom and courage.

NOTES
[1] Ai Weiwei, posted on January 30, 2008.