Update Ai Weiwei: Forty Day Imprisonment in China and Counting

Ai Weiwei in Tiananmen Square in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of the massacre. (Image source: Randomculture)

This past week the news concerning Ai Weiwei’s continued imprisonment by Chinese authorities took on a very disturbing tone. With his detention moving beyond the critical thirty day mark—a maximum time for similar detentions of this kind-- Ai’s 78 year old mother Gao Ying spoke out in an interview with CBC news expressing her fears and mounting concerns about the state of her son’s mental and physical condition. With allegations of torture and fear that the artist may be forced towards some measure of confession, the entire incident has reached a new and urgent impasse. When asked why her son was targeted, Ying responded:

"I think in reality, he was taken because he was protecting the rights of ordinary citizens and speaking for them. With many things that happened, he just had to speak out-he said a lot, criticizing the government for not abiding by the rule of law in dealing with certain incidents. He wanted to speak for ordinary citizens, he wanted (people) to be responsible for lives, and he wanted to find a solution so that this would not happen in the future. His goal was not to go against his country. He wants this country to develop on a healthy path. I think because of this, he offended people in power and they hate him, so now they are looking for an opportunity to take him down-this what I believe."

(image source: Reuters)

Art institutions around the world have continued to dedicate special shows in the artist’s honour. Most notably this week, the sculptor Anish Kapoor dedicated his largest art work ever—an installation sculpture set to open at the Paris Monumenta exhibition called Leviathan—to the missing artist. Several incidents of art activism and consciousness raising have also taken place via street art interventions, and the high profile action of British protester Charlotte Eaton, who walked naked across the Turbine Hall sunflower exhibit with the words “thank you Ai Weiwei” and “freedom” painted on her body, kept the news in the mainstream press. A wonderful set of YouTube videos even made the rounds of art students at the Tate who collectively jumped the barrier to play in the seeds that had been deemed too unsafe to disturb (see video below). U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton even took the bold step (finally) to publicly question the Beijing authority’s human rights record, referring directly to the Ai Weiwei detention.

But what really caught my attention amidst the continued discussion and call for protest was an eloquently written op-ed piece by author Salman Rushdie that has been circulating widely after its intitial publication in The Telegraph a few weeks back. In the essay, Rushdie—a man who became the flashpoint for similar calls to protest following the death threats made against him by the leader of Iran upon the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988—positions Ai Weiwei’s current situation in a much wider context, reminding all of us of the stakes involved:

"The lives of artists are more fragile than their creations. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus Caesar to a little hell-hole on the Black Sea called Tomis. He spent the rest of his days begging to be allowed to return to Rome. So Ovid’s life was blighted. But the poetry of Ovid has outlasted the Roman Empire. The poet Mandelstam was murdered by Stalin’s executioners, but the poetry of Mandelstam has outlived the Soviet Union. The poet Lorca was killed by the thugs of Spain’s Generalissimo Franco, but the poetry of Lorca has outlived Franco’s tyrannical regime. We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight….

When artists venture into politics the risks to reputation and integrity are ever present. But outside the free world, where criticism of power is at best difficult and at worst all but impossible, such figures as Ai Weiwei and his colleagues are often the only ones with the courage to speak the truth against the lies of tyrants. We needed the samizdat truth-tellers to reveal the ugliness of the USSR. Today China’s government has become the world’s biggest threat to freedom of speech, so we need Ai Weiwei, Liao Yiwu and Liu Xiaobo."

• ARTINFO has created a very informative multimedia biographical timeline compiling key moments in Ai Weiwei’s life, art, and activism

•  Smarthistory has added a rich resource page to its website for educators.

• freeaiweiwei.org continues to provide daily updates about the artist’s disappearance.

See the following YouTube clip for another excerpt released by the Tate from its series of conversations with Ai Weiwei:

DOXA Film Festival Preview| Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Werner Herzog's 3D Experiment

Official movie poster for Herzog's latest film project

Werner Herzog is one of those rare contemporary individuals who can claim the title "Renaissance Man" without much dispute. A director, producer, actor, screenwriter, opera director, and even reluctant film theorist—he co-authored  Herzog on Herzog, a book that successfully challenges many of the theories associated with his films while revealing his own unique perspective—Herzog is believed by many critics to be among the most important filmmakers alive today.

Herzog calls the Chauvet cave a "proto-cinematic" experience.

Perhaps not surprisingly then, Herzog’s latest film project The Cave of Forgotten Dreams pays homage to what he calls the "proto-cinematic" experience. In his estimation, this can be found in cave paintings—images of movement, dynamic space, and the tension between memory and fantasy. Set in the famous Chauvet cave in the south of France first discovered in 1994, Herzog's documentary provides viewers with a rare chance to explore one of the most important Western cultural treasures on the planet. This is not an understatement since cave painting represents the literal place where art history constructs its starting point (“cave painting to the Renaissance” is the shorthand description for part one of most typical art history survey courses) and for good or for ill, French caves have come to be known as the richest prehistoric art sites in the world.

Herzog in 3D glasses-- a sight to behold! (image source: filmjunk.com)

For Herzog, however, it was not enough to meet the already serious challenge of getting the French government to agree to his filming of the caves (which he did). He went to the next level and made the controversial decision to shoot the entire film in 3D. In an insightful interview with Archaeology, the official academic journal of the Archeological Institute of America, Herzog describes his decision to enhance the viewer’s experience of the film through the immersive technique of 3D:

"3-D was imperative because I initially thought there were flat walls and paintings in the cave. But there are no flat areas. The drama of the bulges and niches was actually used by the artists. They did it with phenomenal skill, with great artistic skill, and there was something expressive about it, a drama of rock transformed and utilized, in the drama of paintings. This is why it was imperative to shoot in 3-D…"

Herzog goes on to elaborate aspects of his filmic vision for the documentary in this other revealing interview with Empire Magazine (see clip below):

Reviews of the film have been mixed—the subject of beauty and spirituality associated with the “birth of art” (and in France) suggested in this film will always disturb any number of critics. But the consensus remains that Herzog has provided “a gift” to audiences who will likely never see the caves with their own eyes as it remains closed to the public. The Cave of Forgotten Dreams premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and plans are already in place to distribute the film in North America through IFC Films and the History Channel. For Vancouverites, the rare opportunity to preview the film on the big screen in 3D before wider release has been made possible by DOXA organizers, and the film has been ceremoniously chosen as the closing night film. As of this post’s publication, the Saturday night screening has been sold out for advance tickets and a second screening has been added for Sunday morning. 


Cave of Forgotten Dreams will be screening at DOXA on Saturday, May 14th at 7:00pm and Sunday May 15th at 11:00 am at the Park Theatre.

DOXA Film Festival Preview| My Playground and the Practice of Parkour

The official movie poster for My Playground

I’ve told the story a few times of the first time I encountered the art of parkour or “freerunning” – a form of urban exploration where practitioners traverse the environment through a range of techniques, be it jumping, vaulting, climbing, scaling or sprinting. I was in Montreal for a conference and was strolling through downtown on my way back to the McGill campus when a young guy dashed by me on top of a slim concrete wall only a few feet from my head. Catching my attention, he jumped down 2-3 feet in front of me and began sprinting down the busy street, vaulting back up on top of the wall and then performing a backwards flip back to the sidewalk. The person with me explained how a small group of young guys had been performing these acts around the downtown core for about six months. Ironically enough, I would learn all about parkour in an afternoon session of my conference (on the theme of urban intermedia) when a number of these very same young men showed up to deliver a paper about the growing counterculture practice.

screen shot from My Playground captures the stunning visuals associated with parkour

A very strong subculture of parkour exists on the Internet through instructional videos, chat rooms, and networks of practitioners.

Fast forward five years and the phenomena of parkour has become far more familiar in many urban communities around North America. Originating in France with roots in martial arts, gymnastics, and military training, the practice also has connections to avant-garde theories linking the urban exploration of parkour with French Situationists and the concept of psychogeography and the derive. No doubt one of the reasons interest in parkour has expanded in recent years relates to the easy distribution of images and video of parkour practitioners via social networking sites like YouTube. Much like the explosion of interest in street art and graffiti, the focus on parkour is made more visceral through the strong impact of capturing practitioners on video and then editing and setting their images to contemporary techno and/or hip-hop music. See this link for example.

Not surprisingly, parkour has finally become the focus of a larger documentary film. Opening tonight at DOXA, My Playground is the work of award-winning Danish filmmaker Kaspar Astrup Schroder and explores the practice of parkour within the context of movement and urban space, and includes interviews with urban planners, politicians, architects and philosophers.  Set manly in Copenhagen, Denmark (but also traveling to the United States, Japan, UK and China) the film follows the making of the first dedicated parkour park in the world, capturing all of the potential conflicts that such a proposition invites.

The original model for the parkour park in Copenhagen along with visuals from its final opening in August 2009. (Image source: Danish blog)

In this sense, the film is unlike any of the YouTube clips and short films seeking to represent parkour circulating on the Internet, as this film attempts to capture a multitude of perspectives related to how and why the practice is developing worldwide.  Since the film's premiere at the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture in 2009, the film has toured globally and continues to push the discourse on parkour in very engaging directions. As architect Bjarke Ingels, a contributor to the film, explains: “MY PLAYGROUND is a film of course about Parkour, but is also very much about how public life and architecture are intricately linked. Architecture observes human life and attempts to accommodate it, then human life evolves and misinterprets the architecture to expand the realm of possibility and in turn architecture observes the evolved human life and it is this continuous loop of  building and living, building and living”. 

My Playground will be screening at DOXA on Tuesday, May 10^th at 9:00pm as part of a double-bill at the Vancity Theatre.

Weekly Twitter Round Up

Another drama filled week in the Twitterverse that started with news of the killing of Osama Bin Laden Sunday, followed by a heated federal election here in Canada Monday, and then all of the ensuing discourse as a result of both events. Thankfully Mother's Day arrived just in time to lighten the mood. I hope you were all able to honour the special mothers in your lives and get a chance to connect in some way today. I am fortunate to have an amazing and very adventurous Mom who is currently completing an extended vacation with my Dad in the Eastern United States--Happy Mother's Day Mom! I also have several wonderful friends who make the job look easy. You know who you are and I salute you! As for me, I was delighted that the two fur babies in my life somehow figured out how to purchase my favourite chocolates as a Mother's Day surprise. Needless to say I was very touched. And so, as this lovely day comes to an end, check out some of my favourites from the past seven days:

Happy Mother's Day! Send your mother an e-card with a work of art from the Guggenheim collection

Technology May Be Destroying Your Life

Today's #TED: MIT's Carlo Ratti makes architecture that senses and responds

New exhibition sheds new light on Keith Haring's iconic art

Two legends in conversation. Willoughby Sharp interviews Vito Acconci in 1973 for an hour. Priceless

The Two Chinese Art Worlds

The world's foremost expert and biographer of Osama bin Laden interviewed on The Oxford Comment

DOXA Film Festival Preview| W.A.R. Women Art Revolution

The poster for W.A.R. Women Art Revolution takes its inspiration from the famous Delacroix history painting-- a testament to the power of documentary film

I love documentary film. In fact, if I could choose another career path besides the one I already enjoy, it would be as a globe-trotting documentary filmmaker. To be sure, I am privileged to work with and teach a number of budding documentary filmmakers, and it never ceases to impress me how powerfully the message of this genre translates around the world. If you pause to think about how our contemporary society comes to debate the key issues that were in the past represented in large-scale history paintings—think here Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa (1818) tackling issues of race and slavery or Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) sparking questions about social class and political access—today’s equivalent arguably emerges in non-fiction films that create the context for broadly engaged reflection and discussion.

The DOXA Film Festival opens in Vancouver today!

Today marks the opening of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver, organized by the city’s non-profit Documentary Media Society, and over the next week and a half, I will profile a number of great documentary films on the screening schedule. As with the Vancouver International Film Festival, many of these titles will eventually make their way to other film festivals around the world and/or become available on cable channels or as DVD rentals.

Roberta Breitmore was performed by Leeson for nine years as a simulated person.

The first film that immediately caught my attention, W.A.R. Women Art Revolution , is connected to the digital media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, whom we had discussed in my New Media seminar this past term. Leeson became a focus of interest in the class when discussing issues around identity vis-à-vis the virtual and technologically mediated platforms of the gaming and Internet worlds. In early landmark performances such as Roberta Breitmore (1970-79) and LORNA (1983-86), Leeson moved audiences out of the traditional role of passive art observer position to one of increasing intensity and interactivity, often with the added charge of emotional investment. At the same time in pieces such as Deep Contact (1984-89) and Agent Ruby (2002-present), Leeson has consistently raised questions about artificial intelligence and our perception of cyborg bodies as they relate to notions of gender and power. Just a cursory look at her highly interactive and rich website shows a remarkable contribution to the field of digital media arts as a wider whole.

It is therefore quite compelling that Leeson would turn towards filmmaking—a far more traditional media form— at this latter stage of her career. When I first heard of Women Art Revolution, I sought out interviews to get a better sense of why a film about how the women’s movement transformed the visual arts was needed at this moment of what many call an era of “post-feminism.” In an interview done with the Toronto International Film Festival where the film first premiered last year (see YouTube clip below), Leeson describes how the silences of the histories associated with the feminist art movement are critical for keeping the conversation going about the inequalities that continue to plague the contemporary art world. With forty years to reflect on her own experience and that of her female colleagues, Leeson sees the project as the culmination of a long-standing desire to tell a collective story of struggle and perseverance.

Reviewers of the film have universally praised Leeson for creating a “true artist film,” appealing to those who understand and value the challenges of the craft. At the Sundance Film Festival, where the film was recently screened, a reviewer for the Hollywood Reporter stated the following:   In this comprehensive and vibrant historical fabric, we view the evolution of the movement, from its earnest/angry genesis in the 1970s to its embrace of humor as a weapon against the male-dominated arts establishment during the 1980s. It has always been a richly conflicted progression, indeed, a key ingredient of its power and metamorphosis.” That it took Leeson 42 years to find the courage to make the film is reason enough to check it out. 

W.A.R. Women Art Revolution will be screening at DOXA on Monday, May 9th at 9:00pm at the Vancity Theatre.



Further Reading:

Dougherty, Ariel. "The Intersections of Women Centered Media: Funding and Struggle for Our Human Rights." Global Media Journal 7.13 (2008)

Hershman, Lynn. "The Raw Data Diet, All Consuming Bodies and the Shape of Things to Come." Leonardo 38.3 (2005): 208-212.