The disappearance of Ai Weiwei has saddened and angered the international community. As you probably already know, the Chinese artist has been arrested by the government security police on April 3rd, and no official statement has been released since. There have been appeals, petitions, public letters, sit ins, protests, and no response.
Steven Holl and Lebbeus Woods have released statements in which they condemn the actions of the Chinese government, and yet, in the world of architecture at least, nothing’s changed. Foster + Partners would never back out of the West Kowloon development and this only proves further the paradoxical sadness of the architectural trade in the 21st century. And even if Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners had won instead, I doubt that the once leftist ideas of Richard Rogers would’ve had any impact on the practice’s approach to the politics of working under Chinese politics.
As this indeed cannot pass, read below about yet another way of protesting.
‘Hong Kong supporters of artist Ai Weiwei have come up with an ingenious – and legal – way to get their message across; by projecting giant images of the detained mainland activist onto landmark buildings, including police and government buildings.
The images – depicting the sketch of Ai first stencilled on walls in Central, Tsim Sha Tsui and elsewhere two weeks ago by a student identified only as Chin – are popping up as a police serious crime squad tries to track down the artist on criminal damage charges.
An album with 28 black and white pictures was circulating on Facebook yesterday showing images with the words “Who’s afraid of Ai Weiwei?” projected onto buildings in Wan Chai, Admiralty, and Central.’
read more, here.
being vague is almost as fun as this other thing 