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Synopsis This project is a film documentary on Ai Weiwei. From his childhood, via his rent in New York City to his current activism towards Chinese government, this film will present Ai’s life in a chronological order yet with emphasizing on several turning points in his life. And the filmmakers Stef and Malin will approach the documentary mode(which the method Ai Weiwei always employs in his art works) to document Ai’s artistic values and political concerns. And the original inspiration and motivation to do this project is from the bravo suggestion and encouragement from Magasin3 Museum, Stockholm(where Stef was exchanged to work on a case study about Ai Weiwei).

Ai Weiwei’s Life Story Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 in Beijing. His father was Chinese poet Ai Qing, who was

denounced during the Anti-Rightist Movement and in 1958 sent to a labour camp in Xinjiang with his wife, Gao Ying. Ai Weiwei was one year old at the time and lived in Shihezi for 16 years. In 1975 the family returned to Beijing. In 1978, he was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the "Stars", together with Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Zhong Acheng and Qu Leilei. The group disbanded in 1983, yet Ai participated in regular Stars group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong-Hong and Taipei), and a retrospective

exhibition in Beijing in 2007:Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing). He co-founded the avant-garde artists’ group Stars at the end of the 1970s before moving to New York in 1981. From 1981 to 1993, he lived in the United States, mostly in New York, creating conceptual art by altering readymade objects.He studied at Parsons School of Design and at the Art Students League of New York. At the same time, Ai became fascinated by blackjack card games and frequented Atlantic City casinos.

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In August.8 2009, Ai Weiwei was arrested by the policemen when he did his bussiness in Sichuan, China

There he was a leading figure in the community of exiled Chinese artists, writers and musicians and became an active member of the American intellectual and artistic scene. In 1993 Ai Weiwei returned to China where he has worked not only as an artist, but also as a curator, architect and blogger. and published a series of three books about this new generation of artists: Black Cover Book (1994), White Cover Book (1995), and Gray Cover Book (1997). In recent years Ai Weiwei’s activism for social change in China has increased, making him one of the most outspoken critics of the regime and what makes Stef and Malin doubt it might be one of the most significant points why the curator Tessa Praun (Magasin3, Stockholm) invites Ai to have the exhibition which started from February. The events in Magasin3 addresses Ai Weiwei’s art, democracy and human rights in relation to creativity and how digital media is used to in the struggle for freedom of expression.

The Previous Research about Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale(Research accomplished by Stef and Malin in June. 2012)

Is a fairytale or a nightmare?“Fairytale is apparently different from my previous works, as it deals with living individuals,

their lives, as well as their hope and imagination.”-Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is well known by his world-wide exhibitions hold in European countries and United States but seldom made an impact in Mainland China.

Before his Sunflower Seeds being released in Tate modern, Ai Weiwei has been invited and created a project for Documenta12 in Kassel, Germany in 2007, and that work is Fairytale. Presently, Fairytale has been released as one of most significant installation in Magasin3 in Stockholm (located on the lower level inside Magasin3). This time Weiwei remains applying for the multiple art forms to claim and criticize with his political discontent to the dictated Communist party: Fairytale contains 20 portrait photographs of the participants; 10 beds from the 2007‘s installation Fairytale Dormitory; and a video documentary which documented the preparation process of this event. Even though Stef was not witnessed to the former 2007’s installation for Fairytale, from the current presence in Magasin3 Stef got a supposition about what a grand sight the original version should have got. However, while being in a large scale installation, as a spectator, Stef feel more easily get attracted by the surrounding atmosphere (which constructed with the repeating patterns, the large-scale production, the supposed huge budget it may cost) but may neglect how the details being presented when considered it into a huge yet refined craftwork. Thus Stef make a boldly

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Ai Weiwei dropping an ancient ceramic urn, which smashed on the floor at his feet

guess that when the spectators are in the large-scale installations, they probably feel more but sense less. In other words, the spectators may be impressed by the forms instead of the content itself. This happens more frequently when the art work facing to the alien spectators who were not born with the same culture background or who cannot directly get the ideas from the culture context the artist

refers to. The similar problem can be found in the development of ‘National Cinema (s)’ that the national specificity is the key to the success of a filmmaker or an artist who is dealing with their own country’s cultural sentiments. That is to say, on one hand, the national specificity names the filmmakers and the artists with the stylish features, but on the other, it makes them to be “the outsiders” to the foreign lands they newly come to. Or the national specificity works out as a filter to select the appropriate spectators to read the texts. So that when standing front of the Fairytale in Magasin3, I felt the work more readable than what my group mate Stephanie did and the cause was exactly related to my knowledge of the Chinese history and its culture context which helped me decode the information Ai Weiwei encoded unconsciously yet automatically. It also gave me the chance to access to the metaphorical meaning hidden behind the surface of the Fairytale. The mystery is closely being solved from the observation to the antique Chinese wood chairs made in Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). The Chairs were placedthroughout the exhibition spaces of Documenta12 for visitors to use but changed the function this time when they came to Stockholm. Currently, they are placed just beside the bed with only a white curtain in between. Ai Weiwei redesigned the entire space and divided it into several sections, making each section interacts with each other. In other words, we should say Ai Weiwei dealt with the relation between time and space tactfully that the reconstructed

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The Fairytale Dormitory (1 unit), 2007. Source: Courtesy of Magasin3 Stockholm Konsthall

The Fairytale Dormitory (1 unit), 2007. Source: Courtesy of Magasin3 Stockholm Konsthall

installation achieved a higher tensity of its materiality. In this case, the whole work made the spectators more easily understand what the deep intention Ai Weiwei conveys, then it comes the Chinese idiom- “Chui Lian Ting Zheng”. Officially this idiom is used to explain the practice happened in the late Qing Dynasty when an empress (or empress dowager) presiding at court without actually being seen by her subjects, she controlled all of the child emperor’s decisions. Or we say the political orders would usually be done by the mother of the child emperor. Therefore, this old Chinese idiom was turned into use as a critical metaphor which actually made a criticism to the fact how democracy and human rights being abandoned in Mainland China. In the installation, the Chinese citizens (the behaviors as well as the participants of Fairytale) are arranged to take the beds and the chair as their places to take rest. But what Ai Weiwei really refers to is the process of the vivid installation that as long as the participants sleep on the beds they are ready to get into the “practice”, that is to be fostered and trained as the dolls of the communist party. This piece of work also reflects the truth people are being brainwashed and eye-blinded in Mainland China since they were born. Along with a child’s growth, the focused mainstream culture in Mainland China is the party culture which starts its root from Mao through Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin to the current leader Hu Jintao. Every child in Mainland China, as long as they turn 7 or 8 years old (who are supposed to be able to enter a primary school), the first thing they should take action in their first day of the school life is to join the Youth Pioneers Group (which run by the communist party and regarded as the training institute to educate the next generation of successors to the party). The teaching sessions of the Youth Pioneers Group are all designed for one theme that only the student with the best academic score and outstanding political performance can have the chance to be selected as the one to relay the ‘torch’ (represent the spirit of the communist party) from the old revolutionaries of the party. This also explains why most of Ai Weiwei’s installations or art works cannot be accepted or released ‘on the ground’ to the Mainland Chinese spectators because the communist party of China never stops setting censorship to them. The so-called “masterpieces” of art which people can see and know in the public exhibitions, are almost the freakish pieces worked for the party’s political benefit as to do propagandas. Although the democratic projects are really worthwhile works which contains some values will be labelled as either‘it contains too much pornographic or violent scenes’ or ‘it is not suitable to China’s national conditions’. And then these works will be quickly been censored and erased from the public eyes forever. As Karen Smith commented in the latest panel discussion about “Preconceptions for the contemporary art in China”6 that the huge force from the government and its strict censorship leads to the boom of Chinese ‘underground’ art industry unfortunately.

Significance of the Project

1) The most significant cause for making this project is to show how the Chinese artists regard themselves and how their consciousness of “Chineseness” have the influence to their art works. To many aspects, Ai Weiwei should be regarded as a global citizen instead of a Chinese who has a so-called “transnational” identity as he replies Alex Rauch in a talk 2010, he stated “The world is sphere, has no East or West. (Rauch and Ai 2010)” Thus, Ai Weiwei wryly points out that the physical, spherical world has no fixed east and west, and in doing so, he highlights that East and West are ideological constructions. As a cultural producer and political activist who works globally but lives in China, Ai is a valuable figure for beginning to unpick the complex contemporary relationship between globalization and geopolitics, and its affect upon our understanding of political and cultural identities. Ai’s international success is

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in part premised on his global identity: he traverses and transcends borders between East and West physically, culturally and linguistically. Of equal importance is Ai’s national identity, whereby his artistic (re)presentations of ‘Chineseness’ are legitimated and his witnessing and experiences of China’s politics and policing are authenticated. Just as Ai has his own positionality towards China,

western audiences must bear in mind their own particular relationships to Ai as a witness or conduit of ‘Chineseness’.

2) Admittedly, we will use documentary as the art form to present the concerns of the status of Chinese ‘underground’ artists. In this case, the film itself cannot avoid criticizing Chinese government’s censorship towards culture products, and we also hope this film can bring the attention from the society to the young artists, as what they eagerly require is a freer culture atmosphere.

When corresponding to the word- “Politics is art, art is political.”, it works to prove

the struggling between the debated Chinese artists like Ai Weiwei and Liu Xiaobao and the dictator-like communist party. The situation of hard to achieve freedom of speech or even using law or social norms to do the rights defending, this is the point Ai Weiwei was fully motived by.

3) About the reason why we choose a documentary to show Ai Weiwei’s current life situation, the living status, his political concerns as well as his plans for the next step(the installations, exhibitions and art works which are under construction) is because Ai Weiwei always apply for documentaries as the method to present his ideas and he did record almost all the process of his released installations.

Besides, the purpose of making this film is more likely to be compared to Jean Rouch’s idea of Cinéma vérité-search for what the ‘film truth’ can be provoked by our camera. And as Ai is a debated person, we are willing to show more directions and angles of him, leaving the audience to interpret or judge the values.

4) The director Stef has been in Sweden for cooperating the research about Ai Weiwei with Magasin3 Museum as well as working with Malin Wahlberg, the film scholar from Swedish Film Institution. They two have already done several researches on Ai Weiwei’s installations based on their knowledge

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Picture4: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, 2003, video, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne.

Ai Weiweiʼs Installation view from the exhibition at

of Ai. This time is exactly the time they will look deeper on Ai-they are planing to visit Shihezhi, the place Ai grew up; to come to Beijing to interview Ai Weiwei and have a discussion with him mainly about how the Swedish spectators value his works; and also to travel to New York with finding the traces Ai left in Parson Design School as to know better about how Ai formed his political aesthetics gradually from his stay in U.S..

Treatment

Shihezi-The origin of Ai Weiwei’s growth-up Shihezi(石河子)-the sub-prefecture-level city in northern Xinjiang, where was exactly the remote western region Ai Weiwei’s father be banished to when Ai Weiwei was only two. There Ai Qing and his family lived in a hut dug into the ground. Ai Qing’s job for the next 16 years was to clean out the village’s public toilets. Through the hardship, Ai Qing still kept an optimistic attitude towards what he was doing everyday as he mentioned “For 60 years, I don’t know who cleans my toilets. So now I do something for them.” This positive point of view largely influenced Ai Weiwei’s values toward the world. Or at least it does some relations to why Ai Weiwei becomes so stubborn to Chinese government’s

policies. In these cases, Stef and Malin would like to contact with the old neighbors of Ai family as well as visit Ai Qing’s Poetry Archive in Shihezi. Considering about more specific actions we will take, for instance, Stef may interview HRIC Senior Policy Advisor Gao Wenqian to get more supportive information from him as to clarify the connection between Ai Weiwei’s activism and his father’s impact on him.

New York City-1983-1993: A Chinaman in New York During Ai Weiwei’s studies and stay in New York, he took more than ten thousand photos about himself, the city and its inhabitants. With his camera in hand, he obsessively tried to document all the important, less important and banal events and characters around him. He experimented with several equipments and technologies from the simple analogue camera used by tourists to Polaroid. These photos capture the

Proposed by Stef & Malin, Nov. 2012

Page 7 Ai Weiwei: New York 1983-1993 chronicles the ten year period spent by the then unknown Chinese immigrant living

in a tiny apartment in the East Village

2 Year oldʼs Ai Weiwei in Shihezi, Xinjiangʼs home, 1959

Gao Wenqian talks about the connection between Ai Weiwei and his father, 2012

history, culture and atmosphere of New York in the 1980s from an extraordinary perspective. When focusing on these pictures, Stef and Malin did research about how Ai Weiwei formed his aesthetics and absorbed the Western Contemporary art sense from the artists such as Andy Warhol(see picture 5), Robert Frank and Allen Ginsberg(see picture 6). Among these three significant figures in American society,

Robert Frank is the only one still alive. Thus Stef is willing to have an attempt to interview him and ask him about his photomontage experiments and also how he regards Ai Weiwei. Since Malin would like to represent the Magasin3 Museum, we would have some connections to the contemporary art museums where Ai was always been to or stayed with, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

Caochangdi, Beijing

Caochangdi, which translates as "grasslands," is home to migrant workers, farmers, students and a burgeoning arts scene with internationally recognized galleries and artists. In 2000 Ai Weiwei moved to the area, which has been cited as the main reason for its development into an arts and cultural hub, similar to nearby 798 Art Zone. There Ai Weiwei built up his own studio and named it as “Fake Design”.

Since Ai Weiwei’s current life status is not clear(according to Chinese government’s censorship towards the foreign presses and journals), Stef and Malin will meet Ai Weiwei in his

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A photo of Robert Frank and Allen Ginsberg taken by Ai Weiwei, 1989

Allen Ginsberg and Ai Weiwei, 1989

Ai Weiweiʼs studio: Fake House in Caochangdi, Beijing, 2002

studio and invite him to open his voice for us-to expose what he is facing to nowadays, what he is concerning about and what the projects he is gonna do. What’s more, according to Ai Weiwei’s previous statements, most of his designs or architectures should be seen as the category of “Fake design”. That is to say, the concept of “Fake” is not merely shown as his studio’s design. So that Stef likes to ask what this idea of “Fake” relates to his political activism in the promising interview.

Magasin3, Stockholm From February to June this year, Magasin 3 presents the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in his first solo exhibition in Sweden.The exhibition will focus on a number of Ai Weiwei’s monumental installations and his political work. A reading room which will also include documentary films will give visitors a chance to learn about his multifaceted efforts to foster social change in China. Stef was cooperating with Magasin3 Museum as a student scholar from Stockholm University, working with her advisor and the instructor from the course Film Theories: New Approaches. They explored a lot studies related to Ai Weiwei, especially the part of his installations and art designs, for example, the case study of Fairytale(2010). Thus they would like to visit Magasin3 again and collect more information from Tessa Praun-the curator of the exhibition and interview her to know how she interpreted Ai’s artistic sense and political concerns.

M+ Museum, Hong Kong Lars Nittve, a Swedish museologist and art critic. Between 1979 and 1985 he was an art

critic on the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. Nittve was curator at the art museum Rooseum in Malmö (1986–1990), director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (1995–1998) north of Copenhagen in Denmark. In 1998, he became head of Tate Modern inLondon, England. He has since 2001 been director of Moderna Museet, the national museum for modern art in Stockholm. From 2011, he will head the "M+" visual culture museum, in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District.

Stef met Lars in the program series about “Preconditions for Contemporary Art in China”,

May 8 in Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Then they shared about their opinions towards Ai Weiwei’s daily issues. And meanwhile, Lars also exposed his ideas about the difference of art and political contexts between Hong Kong and Mainland China. To convey the viewpoints from an experienced museum director and to continue their talks, Stef is supposed to interview Lars Nittve for this project.

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Lars Nittve in the talk “Preconditions for Contemporary Art in China”, May. 2012

Production Timetable

Feb-May 2013: Hong Kong While continuing research, complete the interviews in Hong Kong and prepare for the shootings in Mainland China, NYC and Stockholm.

Jun 2013: Shihezi & Beijing Complete shooting and research in this two places in Mainland China. Aug 2013: New York City Complete shooting and research in NYC.Sep 2013: Stockholm Complete shooting and research in Stockholm, Sweden.Oct-Dec 2013: Hong Kong Transcribing all the tapes and complete the rough cut. Jan-Mar 2014: Hong Kong Complete postproduction including special effect, sound editing and music composition.

Production Team

Director Stef, Wanjing ZHOU A young female independent filmmaker who is active in film critic, film study and film production. She is also passionate about the researches on the Chinese Contemporary Art and concerns about the artists’ living situation. Thus she is always willing to help them make a voice for themselves, not bowing their bodies under Chinese government’s threat. 2008. April: -Directed and produced the short film “Sports in my city” attended China- Switzerland Youth short film competition for celebrating the 2008 Beijing Olympics game; Prized as the 3rd-run-up; Have been collected by Switzerland Youth Olympics museum.2012. May:-The Film Criric Aricle aboutZhang Meng’s film “The piano in the factory” attended the final list and got rhe third winner in the contest of “City Literary Festival 2012”, May, 2012.2012. June:-Case Study and Research on Ai Weiwei, presented in Stockholm, June, 2012

Producer Malin Wahlberg Malin is a research fellow at the Department of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. She received my PhD at Stockholm University in 2003 and have since then published work in the fields of classical film theory, documentary cinema, experimental work in film and media and early television. She is also the author of Documentary Time. Film and Phenomenology (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and the co-editor of a book on documentary filmmaking in the context of early public television, Tv-pionjärer och fria filmare (Stockholm: SLBA, 2008).

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Since Malin is a famous film scholar in Stockholm, she has been a visiting research scholar at the Department of Comparative Literature, Film Studies Program, Yale University (2005/06) and at the Instituut Media en Representatie. Film- en Televisiewetenschap, Universiteit Utrecht (2004). I also held a postdoctoral position at ACSIS (Advanced Culture Studies Institute of Sweden), Linköping University in 2005.

Production Info

Production Ai Weiwei: According to What?

Format HD / About 60min

Location Shihezi / NYC / Beijing / Stockholm / Hong Kong

Proposed Budget HKD 300,000(Got 10 million ideal money from the

classmates)

Proposed Delivery Mar. 2014

Contact Stef, Wanjing ZHOUstefaniecmchou@gmail.com / +852 63544897

Supportive Institutes

Magasin3, Stockholmhttp://www.magasin3.com/en/blog/exhibitions/ai-weiwei/Http://mocc.pnca.edu/exhibitions/1148/Magasin3 Stockholm KonsthallFrihamnen 115 56 StockholmSverigeTel: 0854568040

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Konghttp://www.scm.cityu.edu.hk/Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre18 Tat Hong AvenueKowloon TongHong Kong Tel: +(852) 3442 8049

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