In 2007, for his invited exhibition at the art fair, Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei did a strange thing. He put out a call on his blog (which was shut down in 2009 by Chinese authorities) asking for 1001 Chinese people to accompany him to the art fair in Kassel.

When I was invited by Documenta, I didn’t want to do a conventional work like painting or sculpture, but rather do a work which directly relates to the real lives of ordinary people… Then the idea came to bring 1,001 Chinese people to view the exhibition as audience, and create a work of itself. The basic concept behind the work is to create a condition which encourages self experience and extends people’s participation of art.

–Ai Weiwei  (source)

Ai Weiwei ended up with a whole bunch of regular working people, from cities, from small towns and villages, whom he picked from web applications, off the street, through community groups and through friends and acquaintances. His main criteria was that the candidates be unlikely to have the opportunity to take this kind of trip under normal conditions. The people were put up for a week in a refurbished former factory building in Kassel. Ai worked with filmmakers like Li Pengfei to document the trip. The resulting film is, according to Ai, “a truly realistic documentary about the current spiritual conditions of various Chinese people.”

What impresses me most about this work is the humor at the heart of the challenge to national and global politics which make travel and movement for leisure and pleasure a privilege only those with certain passports and economic means can enjoy. There is heartbreaking beauty in the immensity of taking (and finding, flying, housing, feeding, filming) 1001 people on vacation. The work cost about $4.1 million to produce. The size of that figure is dwarfed by the absurdity of our global systems, which make movement a matter of life or death for many, rendering it almost impossible for most people on earth to say, attend a world art fair in Germany. Is “Fairytale” art?

Fairytale is a work which relates to social, political and cultural aspects… I don’t even care whether it is an art work. –AW

FREE AI WEIWEI!

People from all over the world used to come to New York, and they all wanted to be part of it all. People were intoxicated and inspired by the amazing energy in the streets of New York, the palpable sense of freedom. People came to New York and we wanted to be like New York. We wanted to reinvent ourselves in the face of that amazing magnetic energy.

Now people come to New York, and they want New York to be like where they’re from. They don’t think they need to reinvent themselves. They think they just need to become successful.

Watch the development of the case against Julian Assange very carefully. It’s pretty bizzare: sexual assault? espionage? Some are coming to his defense. As my friend Barbara says, one likely result of this drama will be greater restrictions on the way we are able to access, use and create various media archives. CBS News predicts a future of never-ending cyberwar. Never forget: sorting through these sorts of archives or databases is the political practice of our time, made even more so by sheer ubiquity. And the creation of digital archives themselves? What sort of politics is that?

One New Republic editorial questions Julian Assange’s/Wikileaks’ status as beacons of serious journalism, governmental transparency and democracy due to their commitment to collect data, without organization and argument. The article cites one of my fave media theorists, Lev Manovich:

The media theorist Lev Manovich has said that the definitive informational metaphor of our epoch is the database. The database is not just a metaphor, in fact—it’s a certification of what knowledge looks like and how it is to be gained. A metaphor is a carrier, a condensation of meaning. A database is a heap.

It is this “heap-ish” quality that makes databases like dumpsters. And I guess the creation of databases is kind of like garbage collection, except the goal isn’t disposal. There is no real possibility of (information) disposal as the existence of Wikileaks clearly proves. Does this mean that political action, and the creation of knowledge itself depends upon dumpster diving? Garbage collection and dumpster diving? Really?

YES! I think so. And I am kind of excited by this new political reality. I’m not the only one.

Tel Aviv July, 2009

Neve Tzedek and Florentine are unlike many other parts of the city, in that the walls of these neighborhoods are covered in all kinds of “writing.” Ranging from graffiti to street art, posters and flyers, this writing screams and whispers for the attention of passers-by.

Reading walls while walking both requires and trains a sense of the city that is difficult to get by perusing the statistics of the planning department, or attending community meetings. The discourse on the walls is of a different character—a kind of ubiquitous white noise, noticeable in an otherwise clean, “white” city. Let’s take up the task of reading while walking this city. Because the writings on the walls, and the experience of reading them, provide a complex commentary upon the ongoing physical, economic and political transformations faced by Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

4-18-2008: Everything must go!
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York

Martin Luther King could never be president. Not because of racist attitudes of America in the 1960s (those haven’t changed all that much), but because he was an enemy of the state, not its benign friend– not a smiling visage on a t-shirt, or a McDonald’s advertisement. We ought to be careful to whom we compare this man, who never hesitated to call out the injustice at the heart of American existence.

This is a man who neither extolled the inherent “greatness” of America, nor tried to “restore” America to a pristine past, which never existed. This was a man who set out with a clear motto: to “Save the soul of America” from itself. He was certainly never silent in the face of wanton destruction of life.

The war in Vietnam is a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality… we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation… We will be marching for [Guatemala and Peru, Thailand and Cambodia, Mozambique and South Africa] and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

Change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change.
Change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change. Change.