Dear All,

I would like to share with all Kafila readers something that my friend Monica Narula posted recently on the Reader List about the intimidation that the well known Chinese contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei has faced, in connection with his support for the currently detained dissident rights activist Tan Zuoren in Chengdu. This is an introduction to Ai Weiwei in the current context and a text of his recent statement released in the context of the harrassment (including beatings by police) that he has had to go through. Please read and share widely.

best

Shuddha

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Avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei, one of China’s foremost public  intellectuals, was recently detained and beaten by police when he  attempted to testify at the show trial of dissident Tan Zuoren in  Chengdu. Harassment and threats are connected, in part, to his “Names  Project,” a performative intervention which aims to compile, publish,  disseminate, and memorialize the names of the thousands of children  who were crushed to death en mass in their “crumbling tofu  construction” schools (the rotten fruits of official corruption and  kickbacks) during the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, while  neighboring government buildings stood intact. The State has strong- armed bereaved parents into silence, refused to investigate government  corruption, and barred the victims’ names from public release. Ai  Weiwei’s vocal defiance has led to his censorship, intimidation,  threats and now arrest and beating.

Having spent the first 2 decades of his life with his father, the  revolutionary poet Ai Qing, in a cadre labor reform camp for errant intellectuals, Ai Weiwei understands that no one in China, no matter  how “high profile” is ever “safe. Thus, he has chosen to push the  State as far as he can in an attempt to reclaim the public sphere for  critical discourse, and champion the cause of free speech and genuine  citizen and human rights in China. As such, he has willingly put  himself in a great deal of danger. His recent statement merits  reposting. I hope that you will pass this on and share it with others  who believe in the need to nurture and support critical public intellectuals, especially in places like China, where there are so few
such clarion and courageous voices.

Ai Weiwei’s Statement

“Watch out! Have you prepared yourself?” —

Ai Weiwei: “I am ready.  Or, perhaps I should say that there is nothing to prepare, no way to  prepare myself. A person–this is all of me–is something that can be  received by others. I offer up all of myself. When the time comes when  it is necessary, I will not hesitate, I won’t be ambiguous about it.  If there is anything that I am reluctant to leave behind it is the  wondrous miracle that life has brought me. And that miracles are that  every one of us is the same, that people are equal in this game, as  well as the fantasies that come along with playing it, and our  freedom. I regard every kind of intimidation, from any kind of  ‘authority or power’ [sic – the character is for quanli as in  ‘rights’, but from the context this appears to be a typo, perhaps?],  as a threat to human dignity, rationality and reason–a threat to the  very possibility of opposition. I will learn to face and confront this.”