“Provocative people like Ai Weiwei must be kept on the fence,” says China’s foreign ministry spokesman.
Ai Weiwei is known for his dissident actions. And at the latest since his abduction by Chinese authorities on 3 April 2011, his name has been synonymous with resistance in the Middle Kingdom.
Wednesday night Ai Weiwei thensurprises with new material. Weiwei parodies the “Gangnam Style” of the South Korean musician Psy. According to the Guardian, with over half a billion clicks, currently the most successful video on the web. Now he has made his own version of the video. However, Weiwei’s parody was blocked by Chinese authorities after just a few thousand clicks and is still not accessible to Chinese users.
The video is a renewed appeal to the freedom of art and speech. According to his own statements (interview of 25 October), Ai Weiwei is concerned with the right to express oneself freely. For him, this is an existential basic right of every human being. If a society denies its citizens this right, however, society loses its creativity. And without creativity, a society cannot be happy.
Unfortunately, his blog (blog.aiweiwei.com) is currently offline. Nevertheless, you can find more information about Ai Weiwei:
in the catalogue of the German National Library in a short interview with Focus Online (link no longer available). Quellen / sources: BusinessPunk, Guardian, Focus, Reuters
on the: Spiegel topic page “Ai Weiwei
