A few days after China’s most famous dissident artist Ai Weiwei was released from jail in June 2011, writer Barnaby Martin called his old mobile phone number. Unexpectedly, Ai answered call. Through subsequent meetings and conversations Martin recorded a full and unparalleled account of Ai Weiwei’s incarceration, from his airport detention to final release.

#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei is a new play by Howard Brenton, based on Barnaby Martin’s novel and directed by James Macdonald, showing now at the Hampstead Theatre. Index on Censorship is taking part in the worldwide live web streaming of the play, from 1930GMT on Friday 19 April.

This elegant performance centres on communication and miscommunication. In a series of baffling scenes the artist tries and fails to convey his version of events to a steady stream of guards, interrogators and officials who do not want to know. Challenged about his blog, Ai replies, “It’s the net, it’s freedom, why can I not say what I want? I’m human.”

He might as well be inhabiting a different world. In rare moments when we watch prisoner and guards communicating, for instance about how to cook Beijing noodles, it feels like Ai Weiwei might have won. His belief in the basic human need to think, believe and act freely has permeated even the Party’s most brain-washed foot soldiers.

These moments don’t last long, however. Although he was never beaten, Ai emerged from 81 days of imprisonment and psychological torture a different man.

This production serves as a reminder that arguments for national security and “harmony” will always be used in authoritarian regimes to limit freedom and condemn artists as “hooligans” and “conmen”, guilty of subverting state power. But all that Ai Weiwei claims to have been doing was depicting “humanity”, “nakedness” and “life”.

Index is glad to support Hampstead Theatre’s live streaming of #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei. You can watch it live from 19:30GMT on Friday 19 April

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The news of Mohammed Afzal Guru’s death in a New Delhi prison on 9 February ignited fierce objection and protests in three areas of India administered Kashmir, surrounding claims the men accused had not been given a fair trial.  The Kashmiri man was from a village close to Watergam, and had been convicted of helping to plot an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 that left 14 people dead. Police said an inquiry has been launched into Mushtaq’s shooting.

Chinese authorities said Elton John dedicating his Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei was “disrespectful”

China has tightened its restrictions on foreign singers performing in the country after Elton John dedicated his Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei in November. Chinese police questioned John after his Beijing performance last year, which he had dedicated “to the spirit and talent of Ai Weiwei”. Authorities then allegedly asked John to sign a statement saying that he had been inspired by Ai’s artistic achievements exclusively, rather than for his efforts to defend free speech. John was permitted to go ahead with his Guangzhou show in early December, but an editorial letter in the state-run Global Times said that the singer was “disrespectful” to include political sentiment in his performance, adding that authorities would think more carefully before inviting foreign artists to perform in future. Culture minister Cai Wu is now allegedly requesting degree certificates from international performers since John’s appearance, only allowing them entry into the country if they can prove they have been university-educated. Classical musicians have reportedly been required to submit proof of degrees when performing in the country since the start of the year.

A Hong Kong activist has been sentenced to nine months in prison on 7 February after burning a Chinese flag. Koo Sze-yiu was also discovered to have burned a Hong Kong flag, during two separate demonstrations against the government. In June 2012, Koo burned a Chinese flag outside the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government, in protest against the staged suicide of Chinese activist Li Wangyang, and on 1 January he was seen waving a Chinese and Hong kong flag with holes in both. He was charged with four counts of flag desecration. The maximum punishment for flag desecration is three years in prison and a fine of 50,000 HK dollars (approximately £4,000). Shortly after his arrest, a Chinese netizen was arrested for posting a picture of a defaced flag on to a social networking site.

A UK journalist is fighting a court application submitted by the police requiring him to hand over video footage of the English Defence League (EDL), it was reported today (11 February). Jason Parkinson has refused to hand over his footage, saying that journalists are “not evidence gatherers for the police”. He fought a similar case in 2011, where police attempted to seize his footage of the Dale Farm eviction of travellers in Essex. Greater Manchester police applied for a production order hearing on 18 February to view all published and unpublished footage obtained during an EDL and counter protest march by Unite Against Fascism in Bolton 20 March 2010. The National Union of Journalists intends to contest the application. Parkinson said that handing over the evidence “could overturn the incredibly important victory for press freedom” that was achieved during the Dale Farm eviction.

In Bangalore, India an artist was forced to remove his pantings from an art gallery on 5 February because they depicted Hindu deities in the nude. Anirudh Sainath Krishnamani was told by police that they received a complaint from a member of Hindu nationalist political group the Bharatiya Janata Party, claiming the paintings ”hurt the sentiments of society”. Police threatened to shut down Krishnamani’s exhibition at Chitrakala Parishath gallery if he refused to remove the offending pieces, which police said were a potential law and order threat and could cause protests or an attack. The paintings removed included a picture of a nude goddess Kali as well as Shiva and Sati hugging each other. MN Krishnamani, Anirudh’s father and a senior supreme court advocate will contest the decision.

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A year ago, literally overnight, Belarus further regressed into a paranoid police state which sees a potential enemy in every citizen. This former Soviet republic of ten million people wedged between Russia and the EU is now a benighted, bankrupt dystopia where ordinary people live in fear of coming under suspicion from a vengeful tyrant.Meanwhile, outside Belarus, the official world is about to go into seasonal hibernation. The Christmas decorations are up in the marble halls of democracy and no more is expected to be heard from there until next year. The levers of political, diplomatic and economic pressure are set at rest.

This is a letter from a few artists to artists everywhere.  As a class, artists have no executive powers but time and again in countries all over the globe it is our voices that have reminded statesmen and politicians of their moral duty to act for the redress of injustice.

In the case of Belarus, 19 December 2011 is such a moment, and we call upon the power of art to disturb the sleep of conscience

Ai Weiwei, Alan Rickman, April Gornik, Bob Holman, David Lan, Eric Fischl,  Gillian Slovo, Hamish Jenkinson, Joanna Lumley, Jude Law, Kevin Spacey, Michael Sheen, Michael Attenborough, Natasha Kaliada, Nicolai Khalezin, Ron Rifkin, Sam West, Tom Stoppard, Vaclav Havel, Vladimir Shcherban

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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained on 03 April 2011 by the authorities at Beijing Capital Airport preparing to board a scheduled flight to Hong Kong. He has yet to be charged and the state has not yet confirmed his whereabouts.

A major survey show of his work has opened at London’s Lisson Gallery joining his first public installation at Somerset House — “Circle of Animals”. As one of the leading cultural figures of his generation, Ai is a political artist in work and in deed. With work that juxtaposes the antiquity and craft of Chinese culture with modern techniques and multimedia platforms, his work has a voice that resonates through histories.

From a junkyard assemblage of domestic doors made from pristine slabs of marble to Han Dynasty vases covered in bold industrial paint to a marble CCTV camera pointed into the streets of London, the Lisson’s compilation of Weiwei’s work from the past six years shows the activism in his art and the artistry in his activism.

Wheatpasted on the walls outside the gallery are words from Ai himself:

“Liberty is about our rights to question everything.”

“Say what you need to say plainly and take responsibility for it.”

“Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo and to seek new potential.”

“Words can be deleted, but the facts won’t be deleted with them.”

The Lisson’s founder and director Nicholas Logsdail argues that Weiwei’s work “has become politicised because of his position. The genius lies in politically gentle forms that are open to interpretation — only when you look into what constitutes the work can you see he’s rebaptised antiquity with a message.”

In the days of the Young British Artists, established galleries like the Lisson and larger institutions like Tate and the Guggenheim were depoliticised. Should political art be shown it was obfuscated beneath layers of visual rhetoric or in historical retrospectives where the immediacy of the message passed its dateline. Thanks to Ai Weiwei and his disappearance at the hands of his own state, an art world already politicised by funding cuts is speaking out. We’ve all become agit-prop. Tate Modern stencilled “Free Ai Weiwei” across the top of its building. Anish Kapoor dedicated his Leviathan sculpture in Paris to Ai Weiwei. Bob and Roberta Smith held a reading of names to remind people that dozens of other artists, writers, and supporters of free expression have either been detained or gone missing at the hands of the Chinese. The Guggenheim has launched an online petition for his release and the Lisson is inviting all visitors to its show to be photographed with a “Free Ai Weiwei” placard that will be broadcast on the internet. There is no scope to be subtle when freedom is at stake.

Greg Hilty, the Lisson’s curatorial director, said that after Weiwei’s disappearance there was “no question” of whether to continue with the show. “Ai Weiwei consistently places himself at great risk for his art. We are showing that his art and activism goes beyond China. He’s an example for social criticism and free expression around the world. To Weiwei, there are no sacred cows.”

Logsdail says: “If you don’t support Ai Weiwei, you’re mental. Freedom to express yourself is what it means to be an artist.”

Believing in total transparency, truth and openness in a society obsessed with micromanaging the lives of its 1.3billion inhabitants is a problem for Ai Weiwei. China’s schizophrenic relationship with maintaining repressive regime structures whilst successfully engaging with a free market economy are themes that Weiwei’s work show. A compulsive communicator, his Twitter account logged the artist’s candid thoughts and movements. His belief is that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to spy on.

A documentary about Ai by Alison Klayman asks “Can an artist change China?”. Not just an artist, this artist. An artist that photographed himself flashing his middle finger at Tiananmen Square. An artist whose studio was trashed by Chinese authorities and beaten when he investigated the deaths of schoolchildren in post-earthquake Sichuan. An artist with a voice and a worldwide audience that China is scared of.

Ai Weiwei is not a revolutionary. He is an artist who shows us what it is to be human by example. He is the bridge between China’s past and its future.

www.freeaiweiwei.org

www.lissongallery.com

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The 53-year-old’s disappearance comes amid heightened tensions in China with the authorities jumpy about the (albeit remote) possibility of any Middle East style protests spreading to the mainland. Several rights lawyers, activists and bloggers have either been charged or disappeared since February.

The western media is sounding a forbidding note about this latest development. While Ai has frequently wrangled with the authorities because of his efforts to push human rights — he’s been punched by provincial police, held under house arrest, and prevented from leaving the country — this is the first time he has been missing for so long. This is Time magazine’s pessimistic take on the situation.

His prominence owes itself to the fact that as a leading artist, he would be globally recognized even without his activism. And for so long that had also been a shield. By holding him, the Chinese authorities are reminding the nation that no challenger to the rule of the Communist Party should feel safe.

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