Tag Archives: Alison Klayman

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art documentaries : Chimeras in the mix

Another year another China art documentary, focusing on questions of identity, or, as Wang Guangyi asks in Finnish film director  Mika Mattila’s Chimera: “what are our roots?”

The question itself continues to inspire new documentary work, but not, perhaps, much discussion or even interest (at least not for me). I remain intrigued, however, by filmmakers who are able to take this topic as the subject of their art, in other words, film artists who make art the fodder for their art. The arrangement is curious in that so much of what is compelling about such work is derived, if not flat out stolen, from someone else’s creative work. Where would, in other words, Mattila really be without Wang Guangyi and Liu Gang, who in most media reports (LA Times, for instance) are the headliners anyway, with the ‘real’ artist–the filmmaker–relegated to round about paragraph three. Journalists can see proportionality in this case of creative production, anyway.

The question is somewhat personal, I suppose, as I’ve endeavored off and on to tackle Zhong Biao in documentary format. Whether or not the project ever comes to fruition, I am certain that the better part of what emerges as watchable (耐看) will stem from his painting, or other products from his fundamentally creative hand. The structure, rhetoric, even cinematographic dimensions of my work would all rightly be upstaged by the artist or artists in question.

Robert Adanto’s work, discussed elsewhere on this blog, is also a case in point, but in watching that work we are forced to admit a certain spectrum of truth to the proposition that the documentarian of art is a thief of sorts, particularly when compared with Alison Klayman’s work on Ai Weiwei, a more modest, and therefore artistically thin operation. Yet in either case there is something there, in the art of the art, something beyond mere convenience (documentarian travels to locales we cannot in order to bring back the goods of what’s good), something expressive and individual, self-deprecating by design, but occasionally aesthetically there in the mind’s eye of the viewer.

And so it will be with Chimeras, I expect. I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes to town.

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Ai Weiwei documentary making the rounds

 

Ai Weiwei. Photo by Ted Alcorn. A Sundance Selects release.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-cm-adv-ai-weiwei-20120801,0,7266384.story

“Never Sorry”

Ai Weiwei documentary appearing in theaters world-wide, and garnering much positive response for his work, and Alison Klayman’s.

What continues to surprise me in the unfolding of Ai’s work is the degree to which a more subtle understanding of contemporary China remains ever elusive to most media outlets, even very good ones. The principal blind-spot (for Chinese 盲点 ) for most journalistic authors is the notion that Chinese “authorities” are monolithic, such that Ai can have an ongoing struggle with “them.” The varieties of “authority” in China are many, and Ai does indeed engage regularly in poking them respectively in their eyes, stamping on their toes, and giving occasional wedgies. For this he has paid imprisonment, and now faces massive financial loss. That loss, however, should ever be understood in context of what he gains in global profile.

Another rather curious point about the LA Times article in particular is mention of “first major exhibition.” I suppose key word here is “major”, though 12 massive bronze heads traveling installed in New York City seems to me to have its “major” dimensions to it. In any event, the upcoming exhibition will hopefully occasion more subtle reading of Ai’s work.

Meantime, I will finally be able to see the documentary in Seattle this week. Hopefully some interesting conversation will be generated at the event itself, about which I can offer some report.

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Here We Go Again: Naked People for Ai Weiwei

The Shanghaiist reports that a movement is afoot to garner more support for Ai by posting nude pictures ala the one above.  The list of such supporters is increasingly interesting, as described by Shanghaiist:

Activists who have posted their nude pictures to support Ai Weiwei include some usual suspects — Zuola, who posed as Michaelangelo’s David; Tufuwugan who posted an image of him looking to the mountains with his bare posterior facing the camera; and Hong Kong-based Wen Yunchao, who posed with an effigy of thecaonima (“grass mud horse”) covering his family jewels. In 2009, Wen infamously posted a picture of his pubesshaved down to the “t” of the Twitter logo when he embarked on a “de-Maoification” campaign, urging his followers to “get rid of mao”.

The line-up on the other side even more interesting, though.  Apart from the Chinese establishment, which, according to this Washington Post article,is now setting its sights on a photographer associated with Ai (Zhao Zhao) for his “pornography”, this gang of anti-nudity advocates includes Facebook itself, which may have just limited FB page of Alison Klayman for carrying the same images that I’ve posted previously on this blog (heavens! is WordPress next?!!??).  Alison, of course, is the documentary filmmaker whose work on Ai Weiwei (“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry“) appeared this year.  If it is true that Facebook has effectively censored some of Alison’s choices, we have an extraordinary extension of China’s firewall and an escalation of arguably the major global conflict of our time–the battle for information.  This one to my mind matters more than the Google case.  Google’s search function was bound to be and should be challenged by other services (百度–in the Chinese case at least), as a multiplicity of avenues, sources, not to mention languages, must be maintained.  Facebook as platform, however, hopefully will remain unfettered for the time being.
In earlier posts I was concerned that no one was much able to consider the phenomenon 0f the challenge of nudity in historical perspective.  I still am. However, we can also see that the strategy of stripping down to make a point continues to be effective on some level.