Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy at  the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco  photo  by Gregg Chadwick  "I, Sovereign, am the First Emperor; my descendants will call themselves the Second Generation, the Third Generation, and will go on forever after."  - The First Emperor, Qin Shihuang (259-210 BCE)      quoted by the historian Sima Qian (145-90 BCE) China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy  currently on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until May 27, 2013 provides tantalizing glimpses of an ancient culture and its rulers' attempts to influence cultural and political memory. Over two thousand years ago, Qin Shihuang - the first emperor of China, began constructing a massive mausoleum to ensure, what Li He, the Asian Museum's associate curator of Chinese art, describes as the personal and political "continuation of the fami...

Provocative Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Creates His Own Gangnam Style Video Here's Ai Weiwei's twitter announcement: @aiww   艾未未 Ai Weiwei 给债主的礼物。。疯转吧！！！RT  @aiww : 草泥马style http : // t.co /OmLdJjP3  来自  @youtube October 24, 2012 3:15 pm  via  weiweiweb   Reply   Retweet   Favorite

Nemesis-Ai Weiwei: The Elusiveness of Being. By Geandy Pavon "The concept of the project is to impose the face of the victim on buildings walls that house government offices … The light on the wall is a symbol of revelation." -Geandy Pavon Provocative work by Cuban-American artist Geandy Pavon as he projects a billboard sized portrait of Ai Weiwei onto the Chinese consulate in New York City. More at: Geandy Pavon Website Video: Imprisoned Artist Ai Weiwei's Face Projected On Chinese Consulate

A Berlin Museum Calls for China to Free Ai Weiwei Last week, Salman Rushdie in the New York Times , wrote an important piece on the plight of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Excerpts below: "The great Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern, a former power station, is a notoriously difficult space for an artist to fill with authority. Its immensity can dwarf the imaginations of all but a select tribe of modern artists who understand the mysteries of scale, of how to say something interesting when you also have to say something really big. Louise Bourgeois’s giant spider once stood menacingly in this hall; Anish Kapoor’s “Marsyas,” a huge, hollow trumpet-like shape made of a stretched substance that hinted at flayed skin, triumphed over it majestically." Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei at the Tate Modern in London - October 2010 "Last October the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered the floor with his “Sunflower Seeds”: 100 million tiny porcelain objects, each handmade by a master craftsman,...

Ai Weiwei with musician Zuoxiao Zuzhou in the elevator when taken in custody by the police, Sichuan, China, August 2009 100 cm x 130 cm color photograph Courtesy Ai Weiwei and Christine König Galerie, Vienna “We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight.” - Salman Rushdie On April 3, 2011, the internationally recognized Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained by Chinese officials at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. The international arts community has rallied around Ai Weiwei's unjust incarceration and an online petition is being sponsored by museum directors and cultural figures across the globe: 'By using Ai Weiwei’s favored medium of “social sculpture,” we hope to hasten the release of our visionary friend." Please ta...

"Our private lives continuously intersect with the history of our time. Rarely was this more evident than in Tiananmen Square in 1989 when I saw a million students rise up in protest. My friend climbed atop our taxi and shouted, 'Democracy is not only for America! Democracy is not only for China! Democracy is for the whole world!'" -Huston Smith The images from around the world bear witness to a global reality. "We are not sheep", they cry from the streets of Tehran to the streets of Urumqi. In both Iran and China, the ruling forces have duped many of the poor, rural citizens of their country into acting as proxy agents for their power grab. In China especially in Tibet and the Uighur regions, much like the British did during the height of their empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, ethnic groups are set against each other to distract the people away from the real foe - the unjust government. The riots this week in China were bloody and many innocents died...