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#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei – review #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei – review
(5 months later)
On 3 April 2011 Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing airport. Then began a Kafkaesque nightmare: 81 days in detention without trial; accused of being a subversive, a conman and a pervert. All this, and more, emerges to compelling effect in this urgent play by Howard Brenton, based on Ai Weiwei's own account, as recorded in Barnaby Martin's book Hanging Man. The idea of turning the book into a play was Ai Weiwei's. For an artist whose works include flying 1,001 Chinese people to Germany, and flooding Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with porcelain sunflower seeds, his own imprisonment is, however grotesque, in many ways his most potent artwork so far. Brenton and his director, James Macdonald, recognise this: the set, cannily designed by Ashley Martin Davis, is a bare gallery; a huge crate becomes the artist's cell. Video screens film the action, and will live-stream a performance around the world. The play has its flaws: parts of the first half feel curiously undramatic, and the fictional exchanges between Chinese officials don't always convince. But, as Ai Weiwei, Benedict Wong brilliantly conveys the artist's bewilderment at having to explain conceptual art to a regime that values only the blandly perfect forms of classicism; and builds to a stunning final monologue, almost unbearably moving in its passionate defence of free speech.On 3 April 2011 Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing airport. Then began a Kafkaesque nightmare: 81 days in detention without trial; accused of being a subversive, a conman and a pervert. All this, and more, emerges to compelling effect in this urgent play by Howard Brenton, based on Ai Weiwei's own account, as recorded in Barnaby Martin's book Hanging Man. The idea of turning the book into a play was Ai Weiwei's. For an artist whose works include flying 1,001 Chinese people to Germany, and flooding Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with porcelain sunflower seeds, his own imprisonment is, however grotesque, in many ways his most potent artwork so far. Brenton and his director, James Macdonald, recognise this: the set, cannily designed by Ashley Martin Davis, is a bare gallery; a huge crate becomes the artist's cell. Video screens film the action, and will live-stream a performance around the world. The play has its flaws: parts of the first half feel curiously undramatic, and the fictional exchanges between Chinese officials don't always convince. But, as Ai Weiwei, Benedict Wong brilliantly conveys the artist's bewilderment at having to explain conceptual art to a regime that values only the blandly perfect forms of classicism; and builds to a stunning final monologue, almost unbearably moving in its passionate defence of free speech.
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