Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Director/writer: Alison Klayman

The film starts up strongly, with cats and wise words: ”Out of the 40 cats, one knows how to open doors. Where did this intelligence come from? All the other cats watch us opening the door. And I was thinking, if I had not met this cat [...], I wouldn’t have known that cats can open doors.”

Provided you came to this movie completely unaware of who Ai Weiwei was (and even then, you probably would have figured out that this talk about cats and doors is probably some sort of metaphor), you must have realized what the whole speech was aiming at. The question in our minds: are you that cat, Ai Weiwei? was to be answered in the following hour and a half of thrilling documentary, ably directed by first time documentarist Alison Klayman.

http://blogs.artinfo.com

Shortly put, Weiwei is a Chinese artist and social activist. That wouldn’t be a problem in the Western world, but turns out to be quite a perilous occupation in communist (though seemingly increasingly democratic) China.

The movie paints a realistic picture of this overweight man who greatly enjoys eating and casually mocks his own love of food, who has a loving wife of many years, on which he cheated with a younger girl, with whom he has a child that he actually asked her not to keep, a man who does not blink during his mother’s breakdown from fear that his ways will get him into trouble and who stubbornly refuses to meet with some admirers who “see him as a teacher”. He is anything but perfect and the movie is not afraid to show him fully. He is also, however, an innovative artist, a maker of incredibly profound conceptual art, deeply rooted in social issues, and a courageous and honest man.

http://www.giantrobot.com, The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds
Tate Modern

He is the second generation of strong-willed, free-minded (and mouthed) artists in his family, and by the looks of it, this could very well pass on to his young son, too. His father suffered greatly during the rise of the communist regime, despite his similar political views, for the crime of being an intellectual. Ai, educated in New York, the heart of the country that its inhabitants refer to as “the land of the free”, experienced this entirely different way of life, and the effects were deep: “once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it”.

With freedom now forever in his heart, he returns home and makes use of it as few of his countrymen dare to. Whenever he sees something he considers to be wrong, he speaks out, reaching out to people through the Internet (something he talks about with the highest regard, with bewilderment even: this kind of easiness in sending your message to thousands at the same time is for certain a thing of wonder). He tried it at first with a blog, but they shut that down. So he turned to Twitter. 140 characters or less, sometimes a photo, and the fight goes on. Like in a game of chess, he says, he makes a move, the government makes a move.

http://uk.phaidon.com/

He is just one man, but there are thousands inspired by his message, he is an international star and China wouldn’t risk exposing itself as a merciless autocracy if they just disposed of him as they have done with other, less known, free speakers. On the other hand, his obnoxious disclosures and comments about the government’s lack of transparency, about its abuses and suppressing of free speech doesn’t help with its public image either. One man has driven the power into a corner and that is probably the most important thing about Ai Weiwei. He has shown the importance of an individual inside a society built on the exact opposite of individuality. He has opened a door for the other cats to see that it is indeed possible, that doors are there to be opened and it is in their power to do it.

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.