Heinrich von Kleist: The Biography

6000 BC) laid out in a regular pattern like cobblestones. He has preserved these objects, although he destroyed an ancient urn (Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995) in a series of photographs indicating a nullification of valuable art in the ‘anti-aesthetic’ style of the rebellious Robert Rauschenberg, which Weiwei presents presumably to incite activism against the CPC. Remembering (2009) marks a return to his most effective approach to art (in my view) by featuring the backpacks of children lost in an earthquake due to shoddy school-building engineering. I believe that his forte lies in using simple, everyday objects as mute testimony to the lives of average humans whose very existence may be extinguished due to political criminality. Next in importance in terms of his quality as an artist is his employment of new media, which he treats as an expression of his personal identity, “I think if you are an architect already, you should be a filmmaker at the same time” (74). Weiwei considers himself to be not only an artist but an architect (without diploma), seen in his collaboration with architect Herzog and de Meuron on The Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing (2005–2008). Weiwei later disavowed his participation in the construction of the arena for his being used as a propaganda tool by the CPC. He adopts the title of filmmaker despite his limited experience and lack of formal training. He believes that he functions as a cinematic practitioner merely by walking through his installations while raising aloft his cell-phone camera as if it were a mirror held up to nature. One might question whether his use of a cell-phone camera makes him a complete filmmaker (as he believes); however, Weiwei remains an effective advocate for the crucial role of the popular experience in life, politics, and art taken as an ensemble, an argument that I find quite persuasive. He is certainly too impulsive in public to endure extended academic reflections upon his aesthetics; instead, he immerses himself in his craft with the enthusiasm of an assemblage artist. Above all, he finds the value in art to derive from its portrayal of his (and our) social consciences as properties held in common. He remains in this sense a moral collectivist and traditionalist. These latter qualities mark both the excellence and the limitations of Ai Weiwei as an artist whose genial personality plays a role in his popularity as significant as the artworks themselves.