{"id":93667,"date":"2012-10-16T13:08:22","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T13:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=9706"},"modified":"2012-10-16T13:08:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T13:08:22","slug":"memories-of-ai-weiwei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93667","title":{"rendered":"Memories of Ai Weiwei"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ai Weiwei hasn\u2019t left Beijing for 18 months, and is closely monitored every time he steps outside his house, but even so he manages to keep up a close association with the UK\u2019s cultural scene. He is guest editor of the latest edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/2012\/10\/ai-weiwei-guest-edit-new-statesman\">New Statesman<\/a> magazine to be published this Thursday. And last weekend, he took part &#8212; albeit remotely &#8212; in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.serpentinegallery.org\/2012\/10\/memory_marathon.html\">Serpentine Gallery\u2019s Memory Marathon<\/a>, the final event before the Serpentine Pavilion which Ai designed with Swiss architects Herzog &amp; de Meuron was dismantled yesterday (Monday). His thoughts on the subject of memory were projected on screens alongside the beliefs of leading artists, writers, filmmakers, scientists, architects, musicians and theorists.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/2012\/10\/16\/memories-of-ai-weiwei\/ai-weiwei\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9707\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9707\" title=\"ai-weiwei\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/ai-weiwei.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"448\" height=\"298\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A nation\u2019s loss of memory, cutting the connection between generations is a method of totalitarian control that Ai Weiwei described in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/ai-weiwei_a_309689.pdf\">interview for Index on Censorship magazine<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You simply burn all the books, kill all of the thinking people and use the poor proletariat to create a very simple benchmark to gauge social change\u2026After just two or three generations deprived of continuity in education we inevitably become completely cut off from our own past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The latest twist in Ai Weiwei\u2019s tax case is that officials are withdrawing his business licence, Fake Cultural Development (Ai&#8217;s business \u00a0vehicle) had not met registration requirements &#8212; unsurprisingly all the necessary documents and the company stamp were confiscated by the police last year. The upside of this ruling is that Ai will not have to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2012\/oct\/01\/ai-weiwei-firm-closed-china\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">pay the rest<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of the tax bill, but his passport has not been returned and he still cannot travel within China.<\/p>\n<p><em>Julia Farrington is Head of Arts at Index on Censorship<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Julia Farrington:<\/strong> Memories of Ai Weiwei<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[327,3669,251,768],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93667"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}