Little escap(ad)e: Ai WeiWei in Berlin

One of the things I had planned and prepared when I left for Berlin was that I wanted to go and see the big exhibition by Ai Wei Wei in Martin-Gropius-Bau. 

I could walk there from my hostel in less than ten minutes. And I had even prepared for the exhibition by getting an online ticket. With that I was amongst the first to be let in as we got to wait in a separate lane in front of the door, and did not have to wait in line at the ticket office.

Photography was allowed explicitly – the guards said “take all the pictures you want, indulge! But, please, no flash!” Now how is that for a change? In the end I had taken fewer pictures than I thought.

It was the second exhibition of his that I have seen. And again I found it a very moving experience – although this time around it was more because of all the political implications and statements expressed through the works on display.

For example, there was the installation to scale of the uninhabited islands of dispute between Japan and China.

Then the recurring motif of the effects of the big earthquake – e.g. the bars of reinforcement either in their post-quake deranged form, or as a replica in marble.

Another strong motif was his personal prosecution through Chinese authorities. Two large rooms were wallpapered with reprints of the bonds Ai WeiWei issued when he had been sentenced to pay back taxes, which resulted in many donations to help him pay off the debts.

In another room you could enter – not more than five persons at the same time – an exact replica of the cell in which he was detained for over 80 days, including the pictures transmitted by the surveillance cameras which were installed in three places within the cell.

Totally overwhelming, but not at all representable in a picture, was the installation of over 6000 stools from several centuries which covered the entire large entry hall. Hundreds of years, and the design of the stools hasn’t changed at all, whereas now so much in China – and not only there – is changing so rapidly.

What I found rather annoying, however, was that in order to take a look from the balcony in the first floor above you would have had to pay the entrance fee for the exhibition on the first floor, even if you did not want to see that other exhibition. (I didn’t.)

The political aspect of the exhibition was, I felt, much stronger than in the exhibition at Haus der Kunst which I had seen a few years ago. although that had already been a very political one. I wonder how long he will last – will they break him, or will he manage to stick it out? Because he won’t be half as effective in his art and oppositional statements should he leave China...

Freedom of speech

This is, as anybody who has read entries here before has realized, not a political blog. Of course, I do have opinions on political issues, some of them are even very strong opinions, and I cast my vote in general and other elections. I try to ride my bike wherever possible, buy more and more organically grown food, and I carry toads across the street in spring to save them from being squished by cars. But these opinions are not at the core of what I write about here.

Nevertheless, in these not quite two years of writing a blog I have repeatedly realized that writing a blog can be a serious political activity. Not only because I have written about Ai WeiWei’s blog as a book and imprisonment, and voiced an opinion on the apparent injustice of treatment he has received from his government.  I have witnessed the numerous Arab revolutions from a looker-on’s perspective and am worried about the various kinds of effects the developments in these countries may have on people’s lives. Did the Egyptian demonstrators really want the kind of government they are now getting, just to mention only one example? How are the new Arab governments going to affect women’s lives in these countries – women who demonstrated for more liberty in their lives?

And I have followed the reports on developments in Russia – how is it possible that a one-minute-performance by a (female) punk band in a church which used the text genre of prayer, “praying” for the removal of the current head of state, can be the reason for a Stalin-style trial?

"Pussy Riot" in glass cage at their trial in Russia -
photo downloaded from spiegel.de

The right to freedom of speech is a political right which is not granted to everybody in a manner as I have been lucky to experience. I admit that I have a rather critical opinion about many things happening in Germany, but I do value and appreciate the basic right to freedom of speech that is granted to me and every other citizen by our constituion. And blogging, even about minor  and seemingly unpolitical things, is a means of putting this basic right into action.

I have had an experience where somebody called me on the phone about a blog entry, blaming me for causing another person harm in her job. How could I do this, and I must be more considerate about other people’s situations, strongly requesting that I remove that specific entry entirely. At first I was taken aback – of course I do not want to harm anybody through anything I write on this blog. So I went back to that particular entry and checked everything I had written. I had to conclude that the difficulties the caller referred to must have been caused by the malfunctioning situation of the particular person’s working situation, namely that she and her superior just did not get along. Nothing I had written could possibly be taken as harmful to that particular person by any outsider, but had been severely twisted around to be harmful for her. I had not criticized her personally, I had not mentioned her name, all I had done was that I had mildly criticized the museum she was working for as a freelancer for not making the most out of some of their items on display. In the end, I did not change any part of the entry except that I removed one picture.

This took place on a very small scale only – but in hindsight I realized that somebody was trying to interfere with my right to freedom of speech. Even if I had raved about the quality of that person’s work, said that I did not like her, perhaps even mentioned her name, it would still have been my personal right to express that opinion. And I don’t really need to be diplomatic about something I don’t like if I don’t feel like it – in most instances I would, however, probably try to formulate criticism in a not-too-blunt manner. Nobody should have dared call me up to try and bully me into removing the post from the blog. Instead, there is an opportunity to execute their personal right to freedom of speech by leaving a comment in the comment box, which might lead to an open discussion about certain issues.

Simply writing a blog is a political activity, even if it is a blog about something as un-political as quilts and my personal experiences with art. I am deeply grateful to have this opportunity of voicing my opinion, no matter how much or how little importance this particular opinion may have, without having to fear to be thrown into jail for many years, or put under house-arrest for one year. Thank you to every single reader – because by reading what I write you show that there also exists that other side to the right to freedom of speech: the freedom to hear/read other people’s opinions so that you can enrich and broaden your own.

Little escap(ad)e: Ai Wei Wei in Bregenz

When I returned from my two-week-stay in Switzerland earlier in the year, I came through Bregenz on Lake Constance and thought I would stop there and visit the fantastic Kunsthaus. However, they were inbetween exhibits – I was a week too early for Ai Wei Wei’s exhibit „art / architecture“.

That was the moment, when I decided that I would have to plan some visits with friends and my brother-in-law before October 16 so I would be able to stop by the Kunsthaus after all. Add to that the experience of reading Ai Wei Wei’s blog, which I wrote about two days ago. Last week saw the realization of these plans – my brother-in-law and my son spent some time at the nearby mini-golf and had some ice-cream while I had some time in the museum.

Despite the fact that Ai Wei Wei has been nominally ‚free’ for a few weeks now the Kunsthaus has kept the writing on the roof, reminding even people who are looking in that direction from further away of the fact that something is amiss. After all, he is not ‘free’ in every respect.

The exhibit covers three of the four floors of the building and concentrates on his architectural cooperations, with a few interesting pieces of pure art put in.

You get to see several different models of stages of design of the National Stadium in Beijing for the Olympic Games. Ai Wei Wei was a cultural advisor to the design consortium Herzog & de Meuron and Ove Arup & Partners, and a few buildings that Ai designed for various American clients.

Very impressive is the installation on the third floor, namely a wooden model of „Ordos 100“. Ai Wei Wei had been asked to develop a master plan for the development of a large area in Ordos, a city in Inner Mongolia with rapid industrial and economic growth and lots of building activities. Ai Wei Wei contacted 100 architect offices from all over the world and asked them to design one house for a specific part of the development area. One of Ai’s aims with this project was the initiation of a discussion of modern architecture in China. He thinks that the current building boom in China, which does not give a lot of thought to principles of design and a concept of modern architecture has a very destructive effect on Chinese cities, and the Chinese identity. These 100 designs are presented in posters along the walls of the third floor. Ai Wei Wei himself was initiated the realization of the wooden model according to scale, all houses were modeled in Chinese style woodwork, made from one kind of wood. When Ai was arrested in April the installation had not been exported from China, and the organizers in Bregenz lived through a few fearful weeks while they were waiting. However, labeled as “Chinese Design” the installation did get permission for export, and on time...

According to one of the staff at the Kunsthaus the project has not been realized yet due to financial (not political) reasons – the investor went bankrupt.

On the top floor you can see the installation „Moon Chests“. Eight large wooden boxes, each with a circular hole in different places are arranged in two rows so that you can see through them. Depending on your point of view the circular holes appear to be different phases of the lunar cycle.

You can also see two photo-series on screens, and two videos. One of them is „Beijing: The Second Ring“. The other is a documentation of the destruction of Ai Wei Wei’s newly completed studio in Shanghai in 2011. The city of Shanghai had invited him to build a studio there, and by the time it was finished he had turned into a politically undesirable person, so the studio was destroyed.

This last video left me rather distressed. What an absurd procedure – to invite somebody to come to a city and build a studio there, and then to demolish that studio just after completion. It seems somewhat inconsitent that the videotaping of the demolition was not forbidden. During the video you could see that Ai Wei Wei himself was present during the demolition, on site. I’m impressed by the mental strength that he must have – to be the personal witness to the demolition of one’s studio, even if he hadn’t worked in it yet, must be a very emotional experience. By videotaping the procedure, he turned around and transformed that experience into another piece of art, and of resistance against the forces who had ordered the tearing down of the building. You have to be very strong to be able to do that...

On reading Ai Wei Wei's blog/book

In July, just before we left for our summer vacation, I came across the newly published German translation of the English translation of Ai Wei Wei’s blog, which was deleted from the internet by Chinese authorities in May 2009. 

Because I already knew then that I would be going to see his current exhibit at the Kunsthaus Bregenz I picked it up and took it along. Good I did, we had quite a few rainy and windy days and I was glad to have taken a decent amount of reading.

I have to admit that I was not too happy with the book at first. For one thing I got the impression that this was indeed a good example that a selection of blog entries do not necessarily make a good book, at least in a situation where the original author did not have a chance to go over the selection and be involved in the editing process. And I had the feeling that this publication was pushed a bit hastily, trying to make the most publishing profit of the fact that the author had been arrested, and that had caused considerable international uproar, at least in the art world. The chronology at the end of the book did, however, include a note on the fact that he had been released under severe restrictions and was now awaiting trial.

These points of criticism from my side are certainly valid for the first half of the book (which consists of a mere 478 pages).

I cherish Ai’s art, I think it is some of the most interesting and exciting art that can be seen right now – at least from the famous people in the art circuit. But at first I was slightly disappointed that this book seemed to prove that he is not a literary genius. This may be due to the fragmentation of the entire entries due to the fact that they could not well publish over 2000 blog entries. Or it may be due to the already mentioned lack of editing from the author, or the fact that it was the translation of a translation... Of course, he might not even have meant to publish great literature when writing a blog, or he might not have thought it would ever be published as a book at all.

However, I did revise this critical judgment during the process of reading. After the year 2006 his texts take on a much more critical and outspoken tone. The back-cover-slurp announced “an artist’s self-definition of himself as an artist”, which I think really is a self-definition as a resistance fighter. But Ai Wei Wei has, if I understand correctly, always seen his being an artist as inseperable from being an outspoken fighter  for human rights, justice, etc.. So it may be a bit narrow-minded on my side to keep nagging about these aspects...

Ai Wei Wei repeatedly writes about the situation of human rights China, he continuously denounces wide-spread corruption on all levels of management and administration in his country, he ponders the connections between ethical conscience, awareness of historical relations, respect for individuals, and he repeatedly laments the political situation in occupied Tibet (official lingo in China: ‘liberated’). He is explicitly on the side of the underdogs and people who have been subjects of arbitrary acts of the authorities, he demands official and thorough investigation of the fact that so many children fell vistim to collapsing schools during the earthquake in Sichuan in May of 2008 geführt haben. (His various activities when trying to establish a list of names of the children who died finally led to his famous installation of thousands of backpacks on the front of the Munich Haus der Kunst.)

In Memory of thousands of dead school children
killed in the earthquake May 2008:
thousands of backpacks form
a message.

He does not spare foreign reporting about the situation in his country, and as the Olympic Games in Beijing are coming closer he gets more and more critical about the intrigues and scheming of the Communist Party in Chinas and the IOC’s greed of gain.

As a whole the book is an intriguing report from a strange country and a document of resistance.

For me, who grew up in and lives in a country where free speech is a constitutional right, it is an oppressive thought that somebody would not be allowed to freely voice a few critical remarks about political ongoings in his country, be they harsh or not. It is hard to believe that censorship would go so far as to delete the blog from the inernet, and that the author was assaulted and badly injured when a witness on the way to court. And that he was arrested under mysterious circumstances for rather obscure reasons, or released under severe restrictions, including that he is not allowed to give any free interviews. When seen under all these circumstances it is certainly a MUST that at least parts of the blog were published as a book, even if that is not the ideal medium for the kind of writings published on a blog.

However, I find it even  more disconcerting that the western world, always so outspoken about issues of human rights, as can be seen in this German article on the openings of shows by Ai Wei Wei while he was still under arrest, does not feel capable of taking any real action beyond a few culture officals stating something on the importance of human rights and that they be respected. I was appalled that the German government did not decide to at least interrupt or even close down the German show on – of all things! – "Enlightenment" that had been opened in China just a few days before Ai was arressted. I can’t believe that chancellor Angela Merkel merely requested that Ai Wei Wei receive a fair trial, to me she is thus making herself an accomplice of the Chinese oppressors.

Why on earth have Norwegian goods been under a trade ban from the Chinese side since last year’s announcement of Lu Xiaobo as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize? Why is it not possible that Chinese goods receive a similar treatment from the western side? Fact is, it is only the economic gain that counts. We talk about human rights, but we don’t really mean ‘at all costs’.

Here are photos from Ai Wei Wei's New York photo exhibit.

 Here is a report on the opening of his show in Berlin while he was still under arrest.

Others can be found when you search the internet.

Little escap(ad)e

We live east of Munich, out in the countryside, where there isn’t really much going on. Although Munich is only approx. 55 miles to the west, we might as well be living on another planet, gathered from the frequency with which we get to go there. So on Monday this week I took additional use of a train ticket that would have taken me through Munich anyway, left a few hours earlier than necessary in order to get to my intended destination, and spent those hours in Munich indulging.

Already the train ride was great. I love looking at the landscape zooming by, even tough I have seen this particular scenery many times already. I got to see a whole flock of white herons standing in a meadow. I got to see many wonderful trees in their winter skeletons, some of which would certainly make beautiful objects for a Daily Art project. The tunnels and underpasses on the way to Munich are decorated with lots of colorful graffitis. And what I liked most: seeing the effect of the warmth of the sun. In certain spots the shadows of trees had prevented that the frosted grass had thawed up, but the shadow itself had already travelled on a little, so you could see exactly where the white frost would thaw next.

Of course it being Monday, the typical day for closed museums, I didn’t have much of a choice where to go – couldn’t go to the Exhibition by J. Albers in the Pinakothek der Moderne which I definitely still want to see. But the Haus der Kunst was open, where I had seen Ai Wei Wei’s exhibition „so sorry!“ almost exactly one year ago. Although they had ‚only’ one exhibition open right now I decided to go for it: Marlene Dumas (English information on her here, German information on her here).

Marlene Dumas is of South-African origin, but now lives in the Netherlands. You can find pictures of her and her works here.  The exhibit is called „Tronies – Marlene Dumas and the Old Masters“. Tronies were sketches of people/people's heads first used for exercise, which then turned into an art form with the Old Dutch Masters. The show juxtaposes Dumas's portraits with a number of tronies.

If you know about M. Dumas, you probably know the painting used for the large banner on the building to announce the show, but if you don’t - before you read the caption below, give yourself a second and try to guess: who is depicted in this painting?

Banner at the Haus der Kunst,
based on M. Dumas's painting 'Naomi'

 This picture is not even that large, definitely smaller than you would guess from the size of the banner. In the exhibition I overheard a tour guide telling her group that the painting was part of Dumas’ dealing with the effects of the fashion world. Naomi Campbell , who has been a steady presence in the fashion world for many years now is shown as an icon, which has a lot of the characteristics of an African mask, and although you can see her pride and feel the strength of her personality when looking at the eyes in the painting, one can also see that she is at the same time one of the supermodel stars and a living victim of that fashion world.

Dumas works her portraits from photos or magazine pictures, not from a live model. I’m not sure whether she used a pciture of a Barbie for this portrait of Barbie, too.

Barbie, by Marlen Dumas

A few pictures were shown from a series of ‚rejects’ in which Dumas had overlaid pictures that she had rejected onto others, tearing parts – mostly the eyes – out of the pictures in the top layer so that the one below showed through and became an integral part of the entire combination. Very interesting effects! It reminded me of some of my techniques used in quilting. If something doesn’t turn out right on the first try, don’t throw it out yet, you may use it in connection with another piece. Always a possibility to cut something off and combine it with something else!

My most favorite portrait in the entire exhibition was that of her then three- or four-year-old daughter Helena with a look on her face that only children at that age can have – a forceful mixture of critical observance, strong-willed anger and defiance. I did not sneak a picture of this portrait, but unfortunately they did not have it on postcard in the shop, and I couldn’t find it on the internet either. However, I did sneak two pictures of a series of ‚collaborations’ by Dumas and her then six-year-old daughter, who had overpainted or ‚corrected’ rejects by her mother.

What I like about these are the contrasts in style, and the surprise effects that develop from that. Of course, it is clear which part of the pictures was done by the child and which is by the adult, but if you look closely at the top left picture in the lower photograph, where the red paint overpaints the orginial, you can see a technique that Dumas herself used in her painting of Sigmund Freud’s wife, which is also shown in the exhibition.

After a stopover in the museum bookstore, which is so fabulously well-assorted that it is a very dangerous and potentially rather expensive place to go, and lunch at the museum restaurant I had enough time to take a little stroll outside. Munich was basking in what almost seemed like a spring-day-sun.

Three surfers at the Eiskanal were making use of the surfwave in the middle of the city.

The boule players in the Hofgarten were out.

And, as is typical for Munich as soon as the temperatures rise over freezing point, people were sitting outside in the biergarten.

Munich does have a flair of its own. And I think I will try to do this kind of escap(ad)e more often – perhaps every four to six weeks? 

More thoughts on Kathy Loomis’ statements

After posting yesterday I spent a long time during which I couldn’t go to sleep because I kept thinking about the whole matter of pictorial quilts, quilts in the art world, art in the quilting world, women in art etc.

This morning I talked to an friend of mine who is a goldsmith by training, and an artist – graduate of Munich Art School – and she pointed out to me that goldsmiths/jewellers face the same problem. Jewellery has a hard time being recognized as art, because it is considered decorative, a craft.

We both agreed on that it all boils down to the question of „what is art?“ What is the line that separates some kind of self-expression from art.

For example, when you see the following picture and know that it was drawn by a five-year-old boy, you would probably not consider it to be 'art':

However, if it bore a different signature, say 'Picasso', you might assume it to be an unknown picture dating from his blue period. (Far-fetched, I know, but let's just assume.)

Or, the above question put differently: „what sells as art?“ It is one’s own decision whether one is determined to make good art or whether one wants to join into the large group of commercial artists.
If you want to sell your work, you may also have to sell your soul. If you believe strongly in what you’re doing you might not have the nerve or time or need to sell what your are making. Vincent Van Gogh certainly strongly believed in what he was doing and didn’t spend a whole lot of time trying to sell his pictures. (Of course, he was lucky in that he had a brother who paid the bills). His pictures do sell well today, though. I think they do because he only concentrated on painting good pictures, and not whether anybody wanted to have or see them, as long as he thought they were showing that he was getting better and better in what he was doing.

Another point my friend and I agreed on was that if quilters want to be recognized by the ‚real art people’ and participate in the art market (i.e. get their share of the money on that market) they need to get out into the real world and meddle with the real art people. Quilters, however, tend to hang out with their fellow quilters, and as much fun as quilt festivals may be, they simply are a big family convention – quilters meeting and talking to other quilters. The quilt world is a closed circle, and an art critic is not bound to go on the lookout for interesting new artist talents at a quilt show, even if it be a large one such as Houston, or the international quilts festivals in Birmingham, England, or Ste. Marie aux Mines, France.

Then, of course, there is the problem of making art with a needle, the wonderful title of Kathy Loomis’s blog. Any kind of needlework – as making jewellery, weaving, pottery – is still considered a ‚craft’. And, as Julia from NZ said, many quilters are perfectly content with considering themselves as crafters.

In big business art, the artist has the idea and employs crafters to execute these ideas. Ai WeiWei’s catalogue for his "So Sorry" exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, last year, shows this very clearly:



Ai WeiWei's Map of China, as it is being executed,
photo of the page in catalogue




Ai WeiWei's carpet for the hall in the museum,
as it is being made, photo of the relevant page in the catalogue



Ai WeiWei's various tables -
photo of the page in the catalogue

Obviously he did do the vases himself.
Photo of the page in the catalogue

Ai WeiWei has the ideas, crafters execute them for him, and he earns the credit. Don’t know how well he pays the crafters … (Don't get me wrong - I loved the exhibit and I think he has great ideas, and I think it honorable that he would employ people to do the manual work.)

I won’t go into the fact that the very large majority of quilters are women. That’s too much to talk about tonight!

Let me – and/or Kathy – know what you think, I’d be very interested in your thoughts.