Aug 18, 2007
One World, One Dream, One Finger
You may have heard about the activist Lhadon Tethong who caused hundreds of black-suited Zhongnanhai officials to simultaneously piss themselves a little while back by slapping this banner on the Great Wall.
Well, I hope the boys in Beijing have an extra change of clothes tucked away in the back office. Ai Weiwei, one of the designers of the Olympic Stadium known as the birds nest has come out and said some pretty pee-inducing stuff:
h/t to boingboing for pointing out this Al Jazeera video
According to the Guardian:
The Chinese artist behind Beijing’s spectacular new Olympic stadium has said he wants nothing to do with the propaganda for which it will be used during next year’s games.
In an attack on the “disgusting” political conditions in the one-party state, Ai Weiwei told the Guardian he would not attend the opening ceremony a year from now, or allow himself to be associated with either the government or the games.
“I would rather be disconnected or forgotten,” said Ai, one of China’s most prominent figures in the arts.
And indeed he may be in some serious danger of being blacked out from any and all Chinese media if he continues to talk in this manner. But Ai is seemingly fearless of any official retaliation:
It is not opposition to the state, but rather in fighting for individualism and freedom of expression, freedom of human rights and justice … If you read newspapers today you see the problems created by this structure and by the effort to maintain power. It is against everything that human society should be fighting for.
Indeed, retaliation from Beijing anytime soon in this case would only thrust the situation further under the international spotlight. And officials have likely learned their lesson about that.
They’ll probably just keep fighting to restrain the voice of the artist and those like him via media censorship. But it certainly looks like they have their hands full with Ai Weiwei.
Further Reading:
this is splendid, and a masterpiece of Architecture.i think it is wort taking a second look every now and then.