Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei

“…a natural raconteur…”—Barnaby Martin

In my recent SAMLA presentation about blogs functioning as extended artist statements, I briefly discussed renowned Chinese artist and political activist, Ai Weiwei, who used to blog up to eight hours a day. Leading up to the conference, I wanted to bone up on the details of his baffling detention, so I picked up Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei (Faber and Faber, Inc., 2013). It reiterates the basics reported by the media, namely that the government had kept a close eye on his activism, brought him in for questioning without revealing charges to the public, and released him 81 days later, citing tax fraud as the motivation. The book goes much deeper, showing that Ai is no stranger to controversy and that his interest in democracy and artistic freedom is well founded. For example, it describes the Stars group of which Ai was part. After their show of paintings outside the national gallery was declared illegal in 1979, Ai decided to move to New York, which he described as ‘another world’ (p. 161).

“Come and visit and we can talk about everything,” Ai said a few days after his release in July 2011 to Barnaby Martin, the journalist who wrote Hanging Man. Since Ai took an oath saying he wouldn’t talk to the media, this offer is really something. A British expat who has been based in China for many years, Martin brings the perspective of an outsider, but one who also knows the culture intimately. The local colour (example: “pancakes filled with chopped lettuce and meat of unknown provenance” served from a bicycle with a hotplate attached—p. 151) may make you want to visit China…that is, if you aren’t worried about being stopped at the airport, being told your travel plans “may damage the state security” (p. 81) and being taken to a shabby hotel and later a military compound in a van, while hooded and struggling to breathe.

The book weaves in and out of the author’s face-time with the artist. It’s not actually until page 70 that Martin gets to his chat with Ai after his release. He is skilled at building anticipation, delaying the coverage of their union by giving a detailed account of how he hoped to approach the interview and recounting earlier interviews he had had with the artist. Martin describes Ai as “a natural raconteur with a colourful turn of phrase” (p. 78). This quality and Ai’s excellent memory are maximized in the interview.

You might say that Ai came by his situation honestly: early on in his incarceration, he was told he was being charged with subversion of the State, the same crime as his father, Ai Qing, one of the most famous Chinese poets, whose works were practically required reading for the Chinese Communist Party before he fell out of favour with Mao Zedong. Martin observes that the lives of Ai Weiwei and Ai Qing are “intertwined with the great people and events of modern Chinese history” (p. 12), and that perspective informs the structure of the book. The exposition of Chinese history in Hanging Man occurs in fits and spurts, not necessarily in order. Surprisingly, the result is not disorienting; if anything, it maintains the reader’s interest, and prevents the urge to simply skip past a section on background. Historical content from the last century includes the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911; the 4 May movement of 1919; the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921; the Chinese civil war (1927-50); the anti-intellectualist purge of 1958 that coincided with the Great Leap Forward; the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution of 1965; the failed assassination attempt of Mao Zedong in 1971; the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989; and the Falung Gong demonstration of 1999. Events such as a the latter (where a silent protest led to individuals being abducted en masse and allegedly murdered, forced into hard labour, or institutionalized) read as harbingers, making the artist’s recent experience less baffling, though no less disturbing.

Martin does an equally good job of distilling complex political situations for the non-specialized reader (like the virtually non-legal status of the Chinese Communist Party) as he does deconstructing the meaning of Ai’s conceptual art pieces that encompass photography, sculpture, installation, architecture, and social media. This process subtly parallels Ai explanation of modern art and democracy to his prison guards, with whom he developed a curious bond. It brings to mind yesterday’s news coverage following Nelson Mandela’s death, in which his prison warden-turned-friend recounted sneaking Mandela’s baby grandaughter past security cameras so he could meet her. Martin is intrigued by this relationship, arguing that Ai may be exhibiting Stockholme syndrome or that the guards received orders to treat him well, knowing the whole world was watching (since some of Ai’s colleagues have not come out unscathed as he did). Martin also acknowledges the sympathy that an author can develop from spending time with someone who has experienced injustice, and describes the conversations as emotionally exhausting. For the most part, he seems to have retained the burden, producing a measured account of Ai’s experience with the police.

Hanging Man is recommended for a general audience as well as academics with an interest in art, criminal justice, or Asian studies. Image: reproduced in 2019 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571280469-hanging-man.html

The Blog as an Extended Artist Statement

“What, exactly, is a blog? This question is our contemporary moment’s shibboleth.”—Jonathan T.D. Neil, Sotheby’s, Los Angeles

Yesterday, at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia, I served on the panel called, Making Feminist Meanings Across Worlds: Print, Digital, and Networked Feminisms and Women’s Studies. The following is a shortened version of my paper, “The Blog as an Extended Artist Statement.”

Renowned art critic Jerry Saltz says, “You may think your work is about daffodils; I think it’s about scrambled eggs” (1). As a feminist artist, I don’t want to risk this type of misinterpretation, so I rely on language to supplement my art practice. Many artists feel that a one-page artist statement will suffice to explain their work, but to play it safe, I’ve written Artist In Transit, an 85,000-word blog.

Digital sociologist Karen Evans writes that in the mid-90s, theorists were generally hopeful about the digital age. They perceived it as an opportunity for traditional communities to be “superseded by open, democratic, placeless cyberspaces in which equalities of wealth, class, gender and ethnicity had no purpose” (2). A few years later, blogs appeared, and took on this challenge.

In May 2009, the same month I started my blog, the power of social media to spur social activism was underscored when a blog by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was censored, removing three years’ worth of posts critiquing the government. He was later held in police custody for 81 days, arguably related to his activism. Going back to 2009, feminist art blogging was uneven: that year, Mira Schor lamented that at times, the contributors lacked professionalism and accountability (3). My goal was to be an exception, especially because I intended the blog to be a tool for tenure consideration as an academic art librarian. In my presentation, I spoke not from the perspective of a librarian but from the perspective of a feminist artist, touching on the capacity for blogs to promote art and art criticism, to spur new art ideas, and to encourage networking within the real and virtual art world. “An artist’s statement….gives you validation [and] visibility,” (4) and I feel that blogs can function in a similar way.

Before exploring these topics, I started with the basics: What is a blog? What is an artist statement? Jonathan T.D. Neil, Sotheby’s Director in Los Angeles, writes, “‘What, exactly, is a blog? This question is our contemporary moment’s shibboleth.” (5) Perhaps an easier definition to start with, then, is that of the artist statement. Definitions of the term ‘artist statement’ are plentiful and varied, but I particularly like this one by curator and art historian G. James Daichendt: “Usually a testimony of the interests, background and goals of the artist, this document explains, justifies, or contextualizes the work of the artist…The best artist statements prepare viewers to enter and engage the work.” (6) When I started my blog, I set out to capture elements that studio professor Deborah A. Rockman associates with artist statements, namely the sources of art ideas, ranging from favourite artists to influential books and articles (7).

Artist statements resemble blogs in several ways, making for a reasonable comparison: art critic Edward Sozanski notes that artist statements reveal the psychology and personality of the artist (8) and curator Lydia Yee feels that artist statements are “an opportunity to tell a story” (9). The story I planned to tell with my blog was how my art ideas developed. Initially, to borrow the phrasing that came out of a study at Rutgers University, I was more of a ‘meformer’ than an ‘informer’ (10). As the scope of the blog broadened to include art criticism of shows relating to my own work, it became something of a feminist soapbox.

The challenge in writing about gallery shows is that as artist Kate Britton says, “social media and networked culture has rendered everyone a critic” (11). Experts waver on whether a blog is a legitimate venue for art criticism and artistic expression. However, the two artists mentioned earlier are indicative of the credibility of blogs: in 2010, Mira Schor received a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant to develop a blog for a year about her art as a counterpart to her latest book, and in 2011, Ai's translated posts were released as a book and endorsed by curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist and by the directors of the Tate Modern (Chris Dercon) and Yale University Art Gallery (Jock Reynolds). My hope is that if I can write well-considered, thorough reviews, people will give my studio work a chance. Although personally, I find that blogging distracts me from creating art, I do believe there’s merit in the strategy undertaken by senior artist Denise Green; long before the 2.0 era, she began writing about art to establish credibility in an art world divided by gender (12).

The blog is a way to motivate myself to keep on top of what’s happening farther afield, but it’s also a way to let outsiders know what’s happening in North Bay’s small but vibrant arts community. Some days, it feels like the return on investment is minimal, but lately, as a result of promoting others online, I have developed unanticipated and fruitful connections locally. These experiences demonstrate the importance of keeping the ‘meformer’ impulse in check, and demonstrate what Hrag Vartanian, editor of the arts blogazine, Hyperallergic, says: “The online world is as much about giving back as it is getting. And if you think you’re going to put something out there because you want it back immediately, then you are not going to get it back. But if you help people online…you’re going to get it back tenfold” (13).

Sources:

(1) Qtd. by Wojak, Angie and Miller, Stacy. Starting Your Career as an Artist. New York: Allworth Press, 2011, 18. Print.
(2) Evans, Karen. “Re-thinking Community in the Digital Age?” Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Kate Orton-Johnson and Nick Prior New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 79-89, 82. Print.
(3) Schor, Mira, A Decade of Negative Thinking. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Print.
(4) Wojak and Miller, 131.
(5) Neil, Jonathan T.D. “Can I get a Witness?” Art Review, Oct. 2011, 139. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.
(6) Daichendt, G. James. Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research. Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd., 2012, chapter 4. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.
(7) Rockman, Deborah A. The Art of Teaching Art: A Guide for Teaching and Learning the Foundations of Drawing-based Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 131. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.
(8) Qtd. by Grant, Daniel. The Business of Being an Artist. 3rd ed. New York: Allworth Press, 2000. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.
(9) Nieves, Marysol, ed. Taking Aim! 1st ed. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2011. Print.
(10) Naaman, Mor, Boase, Jeffrey and Lai, Chih-Hui. “Is it really about me? Message content in social awareness streams.” CSCW ‘10. February 2010: 189-192. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.
(11) Britton, Kate. “Social Media in Contemporary Art.” Das Platforms Emerging & Contemporary Art, 21, 2011. Web. Aug. 17, 2013.
(12) Green, Denise. Denise Green: An Artist’s Odyssey. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Print.
(13) Nieves, 229.

Amy Stoker at White Box Gallery

“The flag don't mean nothing.”—Susan Shapiro (1984)


Last night, I stopped by White Box in the Lower East Side of New York eight hours into Amy Stoker’s durational performance, X. Somewhat reminiscent of Ai Weiwei’s Remembering (2009), which used 9,000 student backpacks to spell out 'Remembering' in Chinese on Munich's Haus der Kunst to memorialize well beyond 9,000 child deaths in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, Stoker cut a 600 square foot American flag into the same number of pieces as the projected number of casualties in the US-Iraq War.

In spite of precision weapons meant to minimize so-called collateral damage (Brewer, 2009), the death total—according to Iraqi Body Count—is currently considered to be over 120,000. Arguably contributing to the Western desensitization to this figure is the media portrayal of Middle Eastern people as “…violent, and fanatically religious” (p. 234, Brewer, 2009). This bias dates back to 1958, when President Eisenhower described the Middle Eastern “campaign of hatred against us, not by the government but by the people” (p. 240, qtd. by Chomsky, 2003). The censorship of media images also weakens the intensity of this number; Americans have been spared “armless children, crushed babies, [and] stunned mothers” (p. 256, Brewer, 2009) that figured prominently in local media. One photojournalist was asked by Time Magazine to stop submitting pictures of wounded civilians. To approach this issue visually, then, is fitting. Also fitting is Stoker’s use of a flag to protest war, considering this pairing emerged during the Civil War and peaked in the Vietnam War (Welch, 2000).

The gallery’s Facebook page billed the event as the dismantling of a flag. It’s a curious description that evokes bombs instead of flags and sidesteps the term ‘flag desecration’ that is used in state and federal law, not to mention the Library of Congress classification system. Was this word choice a strategy to avoid controversy? It would be reasonable, based on what the School of the Art Institute of Chicago experienced in 1989 when Dread Scott placed Old Glory on the floor (like Stoker) in What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag? Interventions from offended veterans; 7,000 protestors in a single day; and prohibitive municipal legislation ensued. Stoker’s undertaking could be considered equally risky. One viewer wrote in the guest book, “…what if the popo shows up? oy.” Public understanding of the repurcussions is murky at best**, in part because of shifting laws and inconsistent rulings in court. When Vice President Joe Biden was a Senator, he noted that a jury would treat differently a veteran who placed a flag on the ground in front of a monument that an obscure artist like Dread Scott (Welch, 2000).

In the US, dissidents have been beaten, jailed, and executed for flag desecration. Still, it’s an issue artists have embraced. High profile artists like the now deceased couple, Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, have supported flag desecrators. Memorable works have been exhibited, like Kate Millet’s The American Dream Goes to Pot (1996) in which a flag is stuffed in the toilet (Welch, 2000). Amazingly, despite being a recurring motif in art, the flag has not lost its resonance. Here’s why.

The double negative in a defensive comment by a high school senior in Randolph, Massachusetts says it all. Susan Shapiro refused to stand for the national anthem in 1984 and afterwards said, “The flag don’t mean nothing” (qtd. in Welch, 2000). Semantically, one can infer—correctly—that the flag means something. President George Bush concurs: “To the touch, this flag is merely fabric. But to the heart, the flag represents and reflects the fabric of our nation—our dreams, our destiny, our very fiber as a people” (p. 129, qtd. in Welch, 2000). Sylvester (1996) similarly notes, “Certainly the flag is a quasi-religious entity to many Americans and has a collective corporeal status beyond that of object. It represents the body politic, as did the king in pre-revolutionary France....Any attack on the flag constitutes an attack on the body politic” (p. 7). At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, the perspective on the right is, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” while the perspective on the left is that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, referring to flag protection and free speech.

Although strategies like defecation have been used, burning is the most common form of desecration. (In fact, flag burning made headlines last fall when Abdullah Ismail died after inhaling fumes from the charring of an American flag. Although it was in protest of a film, the fact that American-Pakistani relations deteriorated after the killing of Osama bin Laden (Greenwood, 2012) links it to Stoker’s area of concern). In my research, I did not find any examples of cutting a flag. The closest I found was prominent hippie Abbie Hoffman painting the Vietnamese flag on his back and wearing a shirt with an image of the American flag that said, “I’m more American than you.” His plan, which worked, was that the police would rip it off, making them the culprits. To understand how deeply such an act of defiance affects the American psyche, consider one man’s comment in 1970 to a news reporter. He said that he would kill his own son “without compunction” if he were to rip an American flag (p. 103, qtd. in Welch, 2000).

Stoker’s performance relates to Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. Ono’s performance involved sitting on a stage on multiple occasions while members of the audience removed pieces of her clothing with scissors. Bryan-Wilson (2003) argues that Cut Piece was a war protest, citing as evidence photographs of Hiroshima survivors whose clothing was blasted into pieces. The pieces Stoker cut were initially as small as these smithereens. Laid in rows of alternating red and white to maintain the pattern of the flag, they became gradually larger over time, giving viewers an incentive to return to White Box because the end result could only be predicted to a degree.

While rich connections can be drawn between X and works like Cut Piece or What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag? as well as to the history of flag desecration, what hardly passes for an artist statement on Stoker’s website suggests that these links are coincidental. Unlike more substantial statements (Canadian Scott Waters’ comes to mind because of the comparable subject matter), her site simply says that her work addresses “difficult topics surrounding war and the military” (http://www.amystoker.com/index.html/bio.html). It’s as brief as her Twitter self-description as “photographer, video performance artist of all things war and the military” (https://twitter.com/jokerstoker). Unfortunately, no statement was visible in the gallery. Perhaps I'm expecting too much: as Rubin (1994) noted, Jasper Johns ushered in the American flag as a viable subject in contemporary art and he was tight-lipped about his concept.

The two-day performance continues today, from noon to 8 pm.


**To the best of my understanding as a lay person without any legal expertise, statute 136d of General Business Law in New York State would prohibit the cutting of a flag for artistic protest, while the Constitution would defend it.

SOURCES:

Susan Ann Brewer, Why America Fights. Oxford University Press. 2009.

Julia Bryan-Wilson. “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” Oxford Art Journal. 26(1), 99-123.

Noam Chomsky, Middle East Illusions. Rowman and Littlefiled Publishers, Inc. 2003.

Faine Greenwood, “Pakistani Protester Dies From Smoke Inhalation After Burning the US Flag.” The Global Post. Retrieved from http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/pakistan/120918/pakistani-protester-dies-smoke-inhalation-after-b, September 18, 2012

David S. Rubin, “Changing Perspectives on the American Flag.” In Old Glory, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. 1994.

David Sylvester. Jasper Johns Flags: 1955-1994. Anthony d'Offay Gallery. 1996.

Michael Welch, Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest. Aldine de Grutyter. 2000.

Image: reproduced 2019 via fair use/dealing. Source: http://bpigs.com/diaries/what-did-i-miss/what-did-i-misswhat-did-i-not-miss-new-york-sunday-jan-27