AWW Pebbles

Ai Weiwei‘s artwork are often whimsical and unpredictable, appealing to the senses while challenging the mind, difficult to accept at times but always engaging and thought provoking in the end. As an example, here is a video segment of a lesser known and somewhat controversial recent work for Regionale10 in Austria, and his dialog with the local people about the work.

Ai Weiwei did not set out to become a political activist in China. He is an artist first and foremost, and what he had wanted was the freedom to express himself truthfully. But his artistic endeavors became entangled with the opaque and corrupt state machinery, when he started the Sichuan Earthquake Names Project to recover the names of school children perished in the 2008 quake. Subsequent confrontations with the authorities nearly costed his life through a brutal beating by Sichuan police; yet he stood his ground and continued to press for openness, transparency, and accountability from the Chinese government, until his detainment and disappearance at the hands of the authorities on April 3, 2011.

Ai Weiwei is a stubborn man with strong convictions. He is also known to have diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition. We worry that his tendency to reject compromises would result in a stalemate vis-a-vis his jailers, causing serious damages to his health and endangering his life. A moving interview, conducted just days before his arrest, shows that he has seriously considered what it means to spend a long time in jail — an outcome that we want to help avert in any way possible.

As a way to call worldwide attention to his plight, we have taken a cue from his Sunflower Seeds installation at the Tate Modern, and we ask Ai Weiwei fans from all over the world to join us and create a response, in our own way, using material and techniques readily at our disposal, but in the spirit of that installation, to let everyone know that we are here, we are many, and we all stand behind Ai Weiwei.