Who's Afraid of Ai Wei Wei?

9:24 AM

Hi Friends,

Please watch this short documentary:


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ai-wei-wei/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid

Not only is it very interesting, it is very relevant right now.  I love how Ai WeiWei uses gentle subversion through creating brilliant and thoughtful sculpture, photography and performance art among other things. The only think I can think of when I hear some of his artistic antics is to draw comparisons to Jesus and Gandhi... it's that kind of thoughtful, humorous, turning of the tables to pointedly expose injustice that has the potential to create real and needed social change.

I went back and read the filmmakers thoughts about making the documentary and about Ai WeiWei and this was the last paragraph:

(Read the whole thing HERE)

"Why isn't he in jail?

After spending the last two years following Weiwei, I still don't know exactly the answer to that question. Events over those two years show that Weiwei is certainly not immune to government persecution. When I first started filming, his blog was still running, with minor government interference; he'd never been put under house arrest or injured by police; none of his buildings had ever been demolished; and he was never barred from leaving the country.
I guess my answer to the question is perhaps succinctly summarized by magazine publisher and popular Chinese-language blogger Hung Huang. She told me, "China isn't China until it's China." She explained that the relative freedom of daily life, and people's recent ability to acquire the commodities and luxuries they want and to live without government interference, doesn't prepare you for that moment when the authorities do descend.
Sometimes China can feel like the Wild West, the kind of place where you can show up at a police station with cameras rolling and get away with it for an hour. Until they stop you. This means, essentially, that Weiwei is not in jail until he is in jail. I hope that this story, and my film, can help raise awareness for Ai Weiwei in case that day ever comes."

Sadly, that day has come.  He IS in jail. 

Go to this site to sign the petition to hopefully get him out: http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei

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