New Yorker Magazine’s China correspondent Evan Osnos has a feature article in the newest issue on Ai Weiwei, exploring the phenomenon and implications of Ai’s evolving role as artist, activist and iconoclast. On his blog, Osnos offers the following abstract:
[Ai’s] cultural and political footprint is unique in a country where people generally face a choice between thriving within the confines of the system or shouting from the shadows outside it. For the moment, he is attempting to do both, and nobody is at all sure where that leads.
Osnos goes on to introduce a video clip related to his article, which is viewable below.
Alison Klayman, a Beijing-based filmmaker, has been following Ai for months, both at Ai’s studio in Beijing and on his constant travels. (Her documentary about Ai’s life and work is scheduled for release next year.) As depicted in this video, and explored in the magazine, Ai visited a police station in April in order to file an official complaint about being beaten by local police last year. The police officers he encounters become the unwitting participants in a work of art that is Ai’s life itself.