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Post by Admin on Aug 8, 2018 18:25:18 GMT
Ai Weiwei's art should have a clear, direct purpose: agitating the Chinese people and protesting against the Chinese Government. But, after visiting Ai's show "According to What?" at the Brooklyn Museum, I had to ask: what exactly is Ai trying to tell the Western world? It's clear that the show functions as American propaganda. American anxiety about Chinese national success grows daily: According to What? shows us the superiority of Western ideology. The art show gives us a curated look at a catastrophically dystopian China. Despite economic/political turmoil in the US, we are told, at least we don't live in China. Ai, like Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, is a protagonist carefully constructed to appeal to a Western audience. He is the exile, the misfit who brings freedom and individualism to a land of oppression. We can view Ai as an archetypical Cold War dissident, a rare beacon of light spreading the word of Western ideology. And Ai himself is committed to the Western art-world's deified institutions. His blend of minimalism, conceptualism and performative work deliberately caters to a fine art sensibility -- a desirable and accessible social currency. But given Ai's lofty political aspirations, Ai presents his work as though it were solely for the Chinese people. According to this story, we expect that the Chinese people should take one look at Ai's pieces, feel oppressed, then inspired to demand change from the Chinese political party. When shown in a Western art world context, these supposedly political artworks lose their activism--all that remains is aesthetic value and the novelty of making political artwork in a politically unstable world. Consequently, China - its culture, its people, and its governing ideology - is sacrificed to Ai's international acclaim as an artist: because the more tragically China is depicted, the better received the work is in America. We--Americans--can feel all the more satisfied with our own ideology, economics, and politics. Essentially, Ai offers China up as fodder for ideological masturbation. When we consume Ai's artwork, he does real damage: the population of China is presented as herds of passive sheep. There is, of course, cowardice and conformity everywhere: but there are also many with enough critical sophistication to notice that Ai is putting on an exotic performance. From afar all we see are the herds of sheep and the big brother shepherd who controls them all. China is used as nothing but a tool to validate western ideology.
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Post by Admin on Aug 9, 2018 18:10:03 GMT
Is China’s most famous dissident artist on the CIA’s payroll? That’s the preposterous question raised by Guo O Dong who wrote an article, “Ai Weiwei: AMERICAN PROPAGANDA,” on BuzzFeed’s “Community” page, linking to it in an email he sent to several of our staff members with the subject heading “Is Ai Weiwei CIA?” After supposedly visiting Ai’s Brooklyn Museum show “According to What?,” the writer has concluded that “the show functions as American propaganda.” “Ai, like Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, is a protagonist carefully constructed to appeal to a Western audience,” Dong writes. His work portrays Chinese people as sheep, he asserts, and primarily caters to “wealthy white folks.” The more Americans hate the Chinese government, spurred by Ai’s critical stance, Dong argues, the better they feel about the US. A recent project by Ai took over Alcatraz Island, using the dramatic setting of the former prison to highlight government abuses in various countries, including the U.S. (See Ai Weiwei is Filling Alcatraz with 176 Lego Sculptures.)
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Post by Admin on Aug 10, 2018 18:02:57 GMT
It’s not the first time artists have been depicted as tools of American ideology. Abstract Expressionism, it’s long been said, was promoted by the CIA and the U.S. Information Agency as propaganda. To be fair to BuzzFeed, the article comes with a disclaimer: “This post was created by a user and has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed’s editorial staff. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone can post awesome lists and creations.”
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Post by Admin on Aug 12, 2018 18:09:50 GMT
Artist and activist Ai Weiwei took to Instagram to show Chinese authorities knocking down his studio in Beijing, with many of his artworks still inside.
Ai, who worked with Herzog and de Meuron to design the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, posted a series of clips showing construction machinery being used to tear down the brick walls of his studio.
The artist, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the Chinese government and has been living in Berlin since 2015, bid "farewell" to the studio he had occupied since 2006.
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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2018 18:22:51 GMT
A firewall used by the CIA to communicate with its spies in China compromised their identities and contributed to their executions by the Chinese government, several current and former intelligence officials told Foreign Policy magazine in a report published Wednesday. In a two-year period starting in 2010, Chinese officials began accurately identifying spies working for the US. Chinese authorities rounded up the suspects and executed or imprisoned them before their handlers were able to determine what was going on. "You could tell the Chinese weren't guessing," one of the US officials said in the report. "The Ministry of State Security were always pulling in the right people." This internet-based system, brought over from operations in the Middle East, was taken to China under the assumption that it could not be breached and made the CIA "invincible," Foreign Policy reported. Two former CIA directors, David Petraeus and Leon Panetta. Dan Kitwood/John Javellana/Reuters "It migrated to countries with sophisticated counterintelligence operations, like China," an official said.
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