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himself didn’t learn of these accusations until after his release. The interrogations focused on the question of which foreign powers had commissioned him to undertake his acts of agitation. Money did come up in this context; WW offered information on the prices his works fetched as well as what it cost to produce them. The interrogators simply couldn’t fathom how such sums could be paid for obsolete and cumbersome objects and ludicrous ideas. The fact that they showed little interest in other topics is explained by the peculiarities of the local application of criminal law: the punishment in such cases is not determined based on what is in the files, which might as well go straight into archive. In a case as visible as his, Party committees decree the sentence; the courts are instructed to mete them out. The arguments submitted by WW the defendant, but also by WW the accuser or his legal representative, were never relevant, if there was ever an opportunity to submit them—in Sichuan, for instance, all courts flatly denied jurisdiction, refusing to hear a complaint by WW that he had suffered bodily harm at the hands of the police even though his injuries were documented beyond doubt and had life-threatening consequences. The argument of the individual, based on China’s constitution and other elements of its legal system as well as fundamental humanist values, against this omnipresent amalgam of arbitrary decisions, ignorance of the law, and transparent and opaque favors bestowed by all-powerful authorities—these endlessly recurring experiences, which he lived through himself and meticulously researched and recorded in numerous other cases, were what hardened the artist and turned him into an activist.
Many Chinese have been imprisoned for less. And when reminded of where the Chinese watchdogs draw the line of what they call human rights activism—where the fun ends, in their assessment— this audacious man will graciously thank you for telling him. But it will not affect him, not affect his endeavors to help build a new Chinese society. Most Chinese people will feel exactly the same, but so few of them dare to raise their voices in this way. He writes for them. They will owe him.
But now, in early April 2011, he had obviously overstepped that line—moments before his departure for Hong Kong, he was arrested at Beijing’s airport by the border police. Back in 1981, WW had deliberately escaped Chinese politics and society by leaving for the US, but the arrest put him squarely and now officially in the camp of human rights activism, surely not a term that has a nice ring to it in Official China. The evolution that turned an artist into an artist/ activist and ultimately into an activist/artist took place over the course of three decades, and with very different velocities in WW’s own perception and the outside world’s perception of him. His time in New York, with everything he had experienced there and his insights into the theory and practice of the country’s arts scene and the American way of life, had taught him that art must not exhaust itself in aestheticism if it is to be substantial. Truly significant art takes an ethical-moral stand. Having returned in 1993 to an authoritarian system whose communist ideology had long started to crumble, a system that even the authorities believed was careening toward a general disintegration of all values, he realized: his art must concern itself with this China, today’s China, and assure itself of this reality in a humanist and rational perspective. Simply striking a contemporary note would not do. Furthermore, arguing from this humanist and
rational perspective, be it in images or in words, would at some point inevitably bring him into conflict with the authoritarian state, which had a very different foremost priority: maintaining the power of the Party.
He had initially moved into his father’s home, where he generally felt he was only a guest and not a particularly respectable one at that, since he had nothing to show to his parents for all his years in the US—no neat diploma and not even a half-decent artist’s career. So he kept a low profile, not expressing himself beyond his work editing books about the experimental arts scene in China. Starting in 2000, the construction of his own residence and studio, a quite spectacular structure, and other buildings he rapidly designed suddenly turned him into an object of media interest, though it was fashion and design magazines that featured him in his role as an architect. He became a public figure, rising to even greater prominence after 2003, when he collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron architects on the Olympic stadium in Beijing. He was first perceived as a political artist in 2005, when he launched his blog. And in 2007, he was transformed into an exponent of the opposition, drawing wide media attention for his open antagonism against Official China: the official festivities kicking off the one- year countdown to the opening of the 2008 Olympics had shocked him and persuaded him that the Games would be a farce, an authoritarian state’s celebration of itself with monarchical pomp as well as distinctly nationalist overtones. His blogs and the interviews he gave on a wide range of issues grew harsher and harsher in tone; he became strident and confrontational. His arguments were undergirded by time-consuming and precise research on cases of arbitrariness on the part of the authorities as well as his experiences with his own cause. His central demand was invariably for freedom of opinion and the rule of law.
His artistic strategies, which had been one with his life as it was, now coincided entirely with his political activism. In recent years, these overlapping concerns have left him no time for more than occasional forays into the subject of Chineseness, this almost infinitely vast field of culture waiting to be further unearthed, from which he had formerly helped himself with particular gusto—back when he still took delight in the refinement of ancient China and in art-making and toyed with meanings and the interpretations of art audiences— in a word, “confusionism.” The situation has become more serious, he has become more serious, now that he has resolved to look the beast in the eye every day and confront it, also by means of his art. By this time, he had established an online community of committed followers numbering in the millions, people who admired the brazenness with which he incessantly picked quarrels with the authorities and the way he was willing to spend good money, including his own, on his activism; with the thousands upon thousands of DVDs, for example, that he mailed, always at no charge, to anyone who was interested, or with the parties for like- minded people that took defeats on the formal legal terrain such as the demolition of his Shanghai studio and turned them into moral victories to be celebrated. Here, finally, was someone who didn’t mince his words, who put his finger on things they too had long railed against. Sure, he too cannot kill the beast—nor does he want to. He simply wants to fight for his own right and hence also, he is quite explicit on this point, also for all those others who equally deserve that right.
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