---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kafila <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 9:35 AM Subject: Kafila To: [email protected]
Kafila ________________________________ Ai Weiwei’s (Chinese Artist) Statement: Guest Post from Monica Narula Posted: 15 Aug 2009 09:55 AM PDT Dear All, I would like to share with all Kafila readers something that my friend Monica Narula posted recently on the Reader List about the intimidation that the well known Chinese contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei has faced, in connection with his support for the currently detained dissident rights activist Tan Zuoren in Chengdu. This is an introduction to Ai Weiwei in the current context and a text of his recent statement released in the context of the harrassment (including beatings by police) that he has had to go through. Please read and share widely. best Shuddha ————— Avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei, one of China’s foremost public intellectuals, was recently detained and beaten by police when he attempted to testify at the show trial of dissident Tan Zuoren in Chengdu. Harassment and threats are connected, in part, to his “Names Project,” a performative intervention which aims to compile, publish, disseminate, and memorialize the names of the thousands of children who were crushed to death en mass in their “crumbling tofu construction” schools (the rotten fruits of official corruption and kickbacks) during the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, while neighboring government buildings stood intact. The State has strong- armed bereaved parents into silence, refused to investigate government corruption, and barred the victims’ names from public release. Ai Weiwei’s vocal defiance has led to his censorship, intimidation, threats and now arrest and beating. Having spent the first 2 decades of his life with his father, the revolutionary poet Ai Qing, in a cadre labor reform camp for errant intellectuals, Ai Weiwei understands that no one in China, no matter how “high profile” is ever “safe. Thus, he has chosen to push the State as far as he can in an attempt to reclaim the public sphere for critical discourse, and champion the cause of free speech and genuine citizen and human rights in China. As such, he has willingly put himself in a great deal of danger. His recent statement merits reposting. I hope that you will pass this on and share it with others who believe in the need to nurture and support critical public intellectuals, especially in places like China, where there are so few such clarion and courageous voices. Ai Weiwei’s Statement “Watch out! Have you prepared yourself?” – Ai Weiwei: “I am ready. Or, perhaps I should say that there is nothing to prepare, no way to prepare myself. A person–this is all of me–is something that can be received by others. I offer up all of myself. When the time comes when it is necessary, I will not hesitate, I won’t be ambiguous about it. If there is anything that I am reluctant to leave behind it is the wondrous miracle that life has brought me. And that miracles are that every one of us is the same, that people are equal in this game, as well as the fantasies that come along with playing it, and our freedom. I regard every kind of intimidation, from any kind of ‘authority or power’ [sic - the character is for quanli as in 'rights', but from the context this appears to be a typo, perhaps?], as a threat to human dignity, rationality and reason–a threat to the very possibility of opposition. I will learn to face and confront this.” Posted in Capitalism, Culture, Government, Law, Mirror Worlds, Violence-Conflict Go, Fly A Kite ! Posted: 15 Aug 2009 01:11 AM PDT Dear all, Here is the slightly longer, original version of a text by me on ‘Kite Flying’ (among other things) that appeared in the latest issue of Outlook, to mark the 15th of August. The version published in Outlook is titledFreedom on A String. Apologies for cross posting on Reader List. best Shuddha ————————- Go, Fly a Kite ! There is almost nothing about rituals of statehood that appeals to me. The speeches leave me cold and patriotic anthems are the worst, most ponderous form of music ever performed or invented. As for the pomp and circumstance of parades and other solemn but pathetic attempts at grandeur – they only repeat their lessons in how distant the apparatus of the state actually is from the lives of citizens. Typically, my attention, when flags are raised up poles, is less on the flag and more on the sweat on the brow of the man doing most of the actual hoisting. Because flags, like nations, get stuck in their destinies, and sometimes have to be tugged at vigorously to open and flap about, or let loose their meagre shower of yesterday’s desiccated flower petals. The palpable anxiety of the hoister (who is worried about what might get written into his confidential report if the string snaps, or the flag stay’s tied up) and the thinly masked frustration on the visage of the attendant dignitary, (be they the principal of a school or the president of a republic ) who wants it all over and done with as quickly as possible, are the two performances that I find most moving on these moments. Apart, that is, from the sporadic defecations of ceremonial cavalry horses, caparisoned elephants and aloof camels brought out to lend the parade of the moment a touch of bio-diversity. Somehow, they ring truer than most other attempts to mark such occasions. Republic Day, with its pornography of ordnance, enormous waste of public money and tacky tableaux is probably the worst offender, but Independence Day, with its schoolchildren bused out to the Red Fort in Delhi and made to suffer the humiliation of security checks at the crack of a humid dawn, doesn’t rank far behind. They, (the schoolchildren at Red Fort) lose a well-earned holiday, and nowadays, the rest of India gets a pious homily from behind bullet-proof glass. Rather than being an occasion for quiet, sober and perhaps personal reflection on what liberty might mean (especially when so many subjects of this republic are denied its substance) and whether it really needs to come all dressed up in the masquerade of a hollow state ritual, Independence Day has become an empty vessel for an increasingly narcissistic commemoration of what it means to simply ‘be’ Indian, as if that were of any real consequence. Meanwhile, the violence that marked partition, co-incident with ‘Independence’, goes un-mourned in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The bizarre continuities, ranging from law and governance to the arcana of state ceremonials, between colonialism and its posthumous progeny – republican nationhood, remain un-reflected upon. What we get instead is an annual faux carnival of top-ten lists to do with an invented ‘Indian-ness’ dished out by magazines and television decked out in tri-colour bad taste. But there is something about the fifteenth of August that still means a lot to me, and that isn’t about flying flags. It’s about flying kites. The fifteenth of August, as anyone growing up in North India ought to know, is really all about manja and pench, about letting loose a full throated cry ‘bho-katta’, when an airborne kite snaps from its string in the sky, and the mad run and skirmish for its capture that follows before it hits the earth. Its about decoding a persons passions from the colours they choose for their kites, about learning to test the strength of paper and to sense the wind by licking your finger. These, and other elementary lessons in areodynamics are still reasons to look forward to the fifteenth of August each year. Perhaps it’s a throwback to the boyhood thrill of holding a taut kite-string in the precarious rooftops and bylanes of a ‘refuzee’ colony in west Delhi, head cocked up, eyes locked in a steadfast gaze intent on scanning the clouded August sky, tracking distant, tiny but majestic diamonds of colour as the kites danced to the wind. Their flight taught me more about ‘attaining liberty’ and their spiralling descent more about ‘losing it’ than all the civics lessons on the meaning and significance of ‘Independence Day’ ever could. Anand Bakshi, in writing the lyrics for the film Kati Patang, (Drifting Kite) did not know that he had, perhaps unwittingly gifted us with the one of the most pithy ways of thinking about the destiny of nationhood and nationalism, that at least I know about. As the song goes, ‘Na koi umang hai, na koi tarang hai’, - there is neither a surge, nor a wave. Ships of state adrift in still, motionless waters, their flags just about fluttering in a spent tailwind, are to me like so many kati patang, drifting kites; neither surge, nor wave, and certainly no pious ritual, can lift them out of their torpor. What can one do, in such circumstances, but heed the call of Mary Poppins and her friends, Mr. Banks and Bert, and simply, ‘go fly a kite’. “With tuppence for paper and strings You can have your own set of wings With your feet on the ground You’re a bird in a flight With your fist holding tight To the string of your kite Oh, oh, oh! Let’s go fly a kite Up to the highest height! Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring Up through the atmosphere Up where the air is clear Oh, let’s go fly a kite!’ Posted in Everyday Life, Politics, Sports You are subscribed to email updates from Kafila To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. Email delivery powered by Google Inbox too full? Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 -- http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
