Ai Weiwei Update: 04.11.11

Rather than inundate y'all with a series of Ai Weiwei posts, I'm going to start Bits-style update posts. The first:

• In Hong Kong, the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China marched "in support of Ai Weiwei, led by Hong Kong legislators Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho and community activist Richard Tsoi" on Apr. 10 (above).

• In his last interview before being detained a week ago Sunday, Ai echoed sentiments German MPs shared last week: "China in many ways is just like the middle ages. China's control over people's minds and the flow of information is just like the time before the Enlightenment."

• China has said Ai is being held for "suspected economic crimes," but one news outlet, The Australian, is now saying his detention is the result of "obscene" art: a work that shows "the artist naked except for a toy horse concealing his genitals. The caption has a double meaning in Chinese, so millions of internet users have seen the six characters interpreted as: 'F . . . k your mother, the party central committee.'"

• More speculation about why Ai was detained without charge and remains incommunicado from his family. Even if the charge wasn't bogus, is plagiarism really grounds for disappearing someone in China these days?

• A US report on China's poor human rights record got a hasty response from Chinese officials: a slapped-together tome about alleged U.S. rights infractions, including the erroneous claim that the United States has the world's highest violent crime rate. One area we should be knocked for: the indefinite detention of Bradley Manning, the suspected Wikileaker who is reportedly being forced to sleep naked. Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and others have decried the "inhumane treatment" of Manning by the U.S. government

• Redacting all ten questions about detained artist Ai Weiwei from the official transcript of a press conference is one thing, but censoring all time travel TV shows? That's what Chinese officials are doing, Boing Boing says. The reason: Such shows are disrespectful to history.

• Via the Free Ai Weiwei Facebook page, a letter from Ai's wife inquiring about her husband's situation:

Beijing, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection，
Secretary Ye Qingchun:

My name is Lu Qing, I am Ai Weiwei's wife. At 8 a.m. on April 3rd, 2011, Ai Weiwei arrived at the Beijing Capital Airport, Terminal T3, prepared to board flight CA111 to Hong Kong scheduled to depart at 9:30 a.m.

According to Ai Weiwei's assitant, Jeniffer, who was traveling with him, at around 8:04 a.m. while she and Ai Weiwei were in line for security checks, Ai Weiwei was led away by three uniformed airport security workers, from then on she was unable to communicate with him. After the flight took off, Jeniffer asked airport security about Ai Weiwei's whereabouts, to which they replied: Ai Weiwei has other business today, he cannot board the plane, we can not tell you the reasons why.

At around noon that same day, 60 policemen holding a search warrant from the Beijing City Police Department searched Ai Weiwei's studio and apartment (258 Caochangdi, Chaoyang district, Beijing) for over six hours, seizing over 129 computers, laptops, hard drives as well as dozens of personal items. They led me and the 9 other staff members present at that time to the Nangao local police station for questioning.

As of 8 p.m. today, it has been over 120 hours since the Beijing Capital Airport security officers detained Ai Weiwei, we have heard no news whatsoever.

We ask of the City Commission for Discipline Inspection to urge the city police bureau to:

1. Let us know why Ai Weiwei is detained.

2. Inform us of Ai Weiwei's daily location and conditions while imprisoned.

3. Inform the Public Security Bureau whether or not forceful measures were taken against Ai Weiwei, if any were taken, in accordance with the laws and regulations we ask the family members to undertake legal procedures.

April 8th, 2011,

Lu Qing

International outcry mounts for Ai Weiwei's release

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's whereabouts are still unknown after Chinese police detained him as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong several days ago. Now artists and international governments are calling for his release, even though Chinese authorities have not yet acknowledged they have him in custody. The artist, known for criticism of corruption in Chinese government and law enforcement, has gained international notoriety for his art as well as his vocal dissent, often transmitted via Twitter. A Twitter petition, fittingly, has been started calling for his release, as governments and artists have decried the detention:

Markus Ederer, the European Union's ambassador in China:

"[We are] concerned by the increasing use of arbitrary detention against human rights defenders, lawyers and activists in China. We call on the Chinese authorities to refrain from using arbitrary detention under any circumstances."

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner:

"We are deeply concerned by the trend of forced disappearances, extra-legal detentions, arrests and convictions of rights activists for exercising their internationally recognized human rights. The detention of artist and activist Ai Weiwei is inconsistent with the fundamental freedom and human rights of all Chinese citizens. We urge the Chinese government to release him immediately."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague:

“I am very concerned by reports that Ai Weiwei has been detained by the Chinese authorities. I call on the Chinese government to urgently clarify Ai’s situation and wellbeing, and hope he will be released immediately. The UK remains committed to engagement with China on human rights. I am absolutely clear that the development of independent civil society and application of human rights under the rule of law are essential prerequisites for China’s long-term prosperity and stability.”

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle:

“I appeal to the Chinese government to urgently provide clarification, and I expect Ai Weiwei to be released immediately.”

Gary Hilty, director of Lisson Gallery in London, which represents Ai there:

We are extremely alarmed by the detention of Ai Weiwei and his colleagues and are greatly concerned for his safety. Ai Weiwei is one of the leading cultural figures of his generation and consistently displays great courage in placing himself at risk to affect social change through his art. He serves as an example for legitimate social criticism and free expression both in China and internationally. Lisson Gallery has a long history of working with political artists and we strongly condemn any form of artistic suppression. We continue to support Ai Weiwei and are fully committed to staging his first solo exhibition at the gallery, opening 13 May 2011.

Nato Thompson, Creative Time chief curator, on Facebook:

People of the world have the right to speak truth to power. Free Ai Wei Wei!

Daina Augaitis, chief curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery, urging Ottawa to call for Ai's release:

"It's terrible. We need to speak out about it. We need to demand his release -as the French and German governments have already done."

The Slought Foundation in Philadelphia:

Slought Foundation urges the Chinese government to respect Ai Weiwei's health and to insure his safety, and to release him immediately. His detainment and disappearance is a great tragedy and devastating blow to the international community. Ai Weiwei is an artist that feels a great love and compassion for China and her people, and we urge the Chinese government to recognize this fact and allow him and his family the freedom if not to speak freely, then to at least leave.

We strongly encourage you to raise your voice and to contact your elected representatives, government contacts, and civic institutions, to advocate for official statements requesting updates on his health and location, and for positions to be issued on his behalf as well as all of those that have been detained in recent weeks.

We also encourage the cultural institutions, universities, and governments in our extended community to join us in taking a principled, public, and collective stand in support of his release, and to keep pressing for ongoing media coverage of his detention in the days ahead.

Update 04.08.11: Creative Time:

We are alarmed by the detention of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and by any action that threatens the right of the artist to speak and work freely. Creative Time firmly believes that artists and citizens alike are entitled to free expression in China and around the world. We rely on artists to envision and shape a more just and equitable global community. Ai Weiwei is an internationally regarded figure whose work encourages us, as a society, to sympathetically address the plight of the disadvantaged and oppressed. His incarceration is shameful and we are greatly concerned for his safety. We call for his immediate release by Chinese authorities.

Ai Weiwei Update: 05.12.11

Ai Weiwei in the hospital after being beaten by police, Sept. 2009. Via Twitter.

• Torture and Ai Weiwei:

The most sinister development — and the only real glimpse yet of what might be going on with the artist himself — has been the release of an account, penned under a pseudonym by someone identifying himself as a disaffected reporter with the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency. The piece was published in English translation by ChinaAid, a United States-funded organization dedicated to tracking religious persecution in China, with the caveat that the organization could not independently confirm its veracity. It states that a "Public Security Ministry official with a conscience" told Xinhua insiders the details of the brutal means used on Ai: "Fu Zhenghua, the chief of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, instructed those handling the case to show Ai Weiwei the video of [dissident lawyer] Gao Zhisheng being tortured, including shots of electric batons being inserted into Gao's anus and his blood, semen, feces, and urine spurting out," the account alleges. "Fu Zhenghua also issued an order saying: Whatever methods were used on Gao Zhisheng, use the same ones to make Ai Weiwei give in. After several consecutive days of torture, Ai Weiwei was finally compelled to sign a statement of confession, admitting to tax evasion."

• An online editorial marking today's anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake three years ago has disappeared from the website of Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily, China Media Project reports. The piece included three allusions to Ai Weiwei, whose art and activism frequently addressed the quake -- and corruption by local officials that may have exacerbated its effects -- that killed some 90,000 people:

“In our hearts, we lowered our flags to half-mast for them. On the day of mourning we called them home and wished them peace. We gathered together all the human evidence of them we could. We read their names together. We promised that we would bear them constantly in mind, never forgetting, over and over again. We did so much, and yet we did too little. Those of you who were lost and did not return, where are you? Can the light we kindle shine across your path? We cannot do more.”

Ai sought to compile a list of the children killed in the quake, something the government refused to do. The editorial also mentioned quake victims who "lived happily on this earth for seven years, or for longer or shorter periods of time" -- a clear reference to an installation by Ai that spelled out a grieving mother's words about her late daughter in children's school backpacks on the exterior of a Munich museum: "She lived happily for seven years in this world."

• Ai's studio has released a video commemorating the quake's anniversary. Edited before Ai's detention more than a month ago, the video "consists of harrowing interviews with black-clad parents whose children died in the quake, and who have braved beatings, official harassment, and detentions in an attempt to protest alleged shoddy construction in the quake-hit schools," Radio Free Asia reports.

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, traveling in China this week, called Beijing's human-rights record "deplorable": "They're worried and they are trying to stop history, which is a fool's errand. They cannot do it. But they're going to hold it off as long as possible." The State Department is reportedly investing $19 million to help Chinese and Iranian dissidents bypass government internet censors through new technology dubbed “slingshots” that sidestep firewalls in those countries.

• Sculptor Anish Kapoor on Ai's detention:

I feel that as artists we have a communal voice and it's important that we stick together, that we have a sense of solidarity with each other. It would be nice to see the art world come together a little more. Perhaps all museums and galleries should be closed for a day across the world. I think some such campaign needs to form itself... It does bear witness to the barbarity of governments that if they're that paranoid they have to put away artists. It's a ridiculous situation.

• Alison Klayman, director of the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, will be a guest on The Colbert Report Monday night, May 16, the film's Facebook page confirms. Support production of the film on Kickstarter.

• Jed Perl at the New Republic writes on Ai, "the Chinese answer to Joseph Beuys, a post-Duchampian shaman with an Asian spin."

• ArtInfo.com looks at a fashion trend around Ai's plight, noting a Free Ai shirt in the window of Brooklyn Industries... an apparel company called out in 2009 for outsourcing its work to China.

Ai Weiwei Update: 04.14.11

Ai Weiwei on the Met's roof; photo: Alison Klayman

• Ai Weiwei, whose art frequently features his own outstretched middle finger pointed at centers of power, including Tiananmen Square, is "confessing" to his crimes. That according to a Beijing-controlled paper in Hong Kong. The Wen Po claims Ai "has had quite a good attitude in co-operating with the investigation and has begun to confess," adding that the artist -- in detention since Apr. 3 -- is suspected of bigamy, tax evasion and distributing pornography. Ai's family, naturally, says the report is absurd.

• Hong Kong police are trying to track down who's behind the "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei" graffiti that's been appearing there.

• Amnesty: China has targeted around 100 human rights activists. Meanwhile, 21-year old student Wei Qiang, who worked in Ai's studio, has been sentenced to "two years of re-education through labor" for attending a pro-democracy demonstration, The Australian reports.

• Der Spiegel interviews a defensive Meinhard von Gerkan, the German architect who designed the National Museum of China on Tiananmen Square. He says China today isn't as bad as East Germany was. "I experienced the East German system up close, because I studied in Berlin. What I experienced at the time -- the level of inhuman behavior -- doesn't exist in China by a long shot," he says. Der Spiegel's reply: "Ai Weiwei, the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and many others in similar positions would probably disagree."

• "Something historically obscene is happening here," writes Jonathan Jones. "It is as if different times exist simultaneously. In one time-stream, democracy is in global demand and artists including Ai Weiwei are revealing the richness of China's culture to the world. Yet in the sinister second stream it is 1950, and dissidents can be blackguarded and bullied with total impunity by a system that takes Orwell's 1984 as a handbook."

• More dualities in a great piece by another Jones -- Colin -- in Dissent, who quotes a 2009 Ai interview: “On the one hand, the prime minister would memorize my father’s poetry in front of the great public, but on the other hand, the police were, you know, following me. So it’s hard to say.” Read "The Purge of Ai Weiwei."

• In a 2010 interview, Ai said, "I have to speak for the generation, or generations, who doesn't have a chance to speak out... Also I have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out."

• Video: Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs, 1983-1993 (20 min.).

• The Times blogs about Creative Time's Sunday protest, which is based on Ai's 2007 Documenta installation in which he set out 1001 Qing Dynasty chairs. This time, the plan is for it to be happening worldwide in front of Chinese embassies and using all kinds of chairs. (If you're going, please feel free to share photos with me. Email paul [at] eyeteeth [dot] org.)

Ai Weiwei Update: 05.25.11

Nemesis-Ai Weiwei: The Elusiveness of Being, guerrilla projection, Geandy Pavo, May 20, 2011, NYC

• Nearly two months after he was first taken by police, Ai Weiwei has finally been officially charged. A report on New China News Agency on Friday, which was quickly removed, said Ai's Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd. had "intentionally destroyed accounting records" and evaded "huge amounts" of taxes. Despite the fact that Ai's whereabouts went unacknowledged by police for days after taken into police custody and the fact that his wife was only allowed to visit him for the first time early last week, China claims Ai was "legally placed under supervised residence" and that "authorities have protected his rights to family visits." He remains in lockup.

• As noted here last week, Ai's wife, Lu Qing, has already addressed the tax evasion issue: "He's not the company's legally-designated representative, nor is he the chief executive. So even if the company is accused of these crimes, Ai Weiwei should not be detained."

• Chinese lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, one of a dwindling number of people who still speak out on Twitter about sensitive issues, has problems with the Chinese case against Ai, including their claim that they never targeted Ai for his controversial art activities.

• Ai's detention has sparked creative responses from artists worldwide. The latest follows in the footsteps of both Cpak Ming, who projected an image from an Ai stencil on the wall of Hong Kong's People's Liberation Army barracks, and Krzysztof Wodiczk, who has made politically incisive art by projecting images on monuments and government buildings worldwide. Cuban artist Geandy Pavon has projected a photo of Ai's face on the exterior of the Chinese Consulate in New York (here's video).

• Pavon tells Hyperallergic that he created the image by filmed an image of Ai's face reflected in sunflower oil (a referene to Ai's sunflower seed installation at Tate Modern). Born in Cuba but forced to leave for his political views, Geandy sees a parallel between Ai and Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata: "Ai Weiwei is a victim of the same system as Zapata. When I projected Ai weiwei’s face, I projected all the people who have suffered, who have gone through the same thing. I think a victim is always a mirror of other victims."

• Read recent Ai Weiwei Updates.

Ai Weiwei Update: 06.16.11

• Video: AFP on how Ai Weiwei's detention -- now 74 days and counting -- has sparked creative protest in Hong Kong (including the artwork pictured above).

• Sculptor Anish Kapoor -- who's been outspoken about China's detention of Ai Weiwei and dedicated his new work, Leviathan, to the Chinese artist -- says he's backing out of plans to present his work at the National Museum of China in Beijing in protest.

• Of the British Council–organized "UK Now" project to take place in 12 Chinese cities, in which Kapoor's work was to be shown, The Telegraph's Peter Foster writes, "How comfortable will it be for senior figures in the British arts and political establishment to be hobnobbing with the Communist Party’s cultural tsars when Ai, China’s most internationally famous artist, still languishes in jail – as its reasonable to presume he will be?"

• Ai's imprisonment got "virtually no official acknowledgment" at one of the art world's biggest soirees, the Venice Biennale. Writes Jon Wiener:

Perhaps the most striking thing about all this is the absence of any recognition of Ai Weiwei’s imprisonment on the part of the officials of the Biennale, especially curator Brice Curiger. Ai Weiwei was mentioned only once at an official event: at the first day opening of the preview, Paolo Baratta, president of the Biennale, told reporters, “We are great friends with the Chinese.” Then came a pause that implied “but,” followed by “I have written a letter to the ambassador of China in Italy saying how wonderful it would be if we could have happy news about Ai Weiwei.” And that was it for Ai WeiWei at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

• Architizer looks at the sanctuary Ai designed for pilgrims on Mexico's Ruta del Pelegrino. (Via Curbed.)

• Activists hold a sing-in at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a museum slammed for long remaining neutral about Ai's detention while showing an exhibition of work presented collaboratively with Chinese authorities. (Via MJS.)

• The State Department's Dan Baer has discussed the denial of service attack by Chinese hackers on Change.org's Ai Weiwei petition (an attack first confirmed by Eyeteeth). Baer "raised the case of Change.org directly" with China's foreign ministry in April, and the "Department will continue to press China on the importance of an open and unrestricted Internet," according to letter from Change.org to Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

Ai Weiwei Update: 05.20.11

NYC wheatpaste poster spotted by Jason Andrew, via Hyperallergic

• China's state-run media says Ai Weiwei, in police custody for 47 days and counting, evaded taxes, a claim his family says is bogus. Ai's wife, Lu Qing, says Ai's not even "the company's legally-designated representative, nor is he the chief executive." Lu has been told that her husband is "under residential surveillance" and that he still hasn't been formally charged.

• It's clear that petitions, condemnation of China by global diplomats and street-art campaigns won't sway China to release Ai. So many voices are now calling for an art-world boycott against the country. A petition at Avaaz.org -- which now has nearly 127,000 signatures -- suggests there's some interest in such a move, but a big question is whether galleries and institutions follow? Early indications aren't promising.

• London's Lisson Gallery, which has an Ai Weiwei show up now, won't back out of the Hong Kong art fair. In a release it stated why:

ART HK is an important international art fair that takes place in a special administrative region of China with its own democratic process, greater freedom of press and an independent judiciary. Hong Kong is a gateway to the entire Asian region, not just China, and its ART HK fair, auction houses and galleries represent the plurality of Asian voices and identities.

At this stage we feel that we can do more for Ai Weiwei by being present at the fair. By continuing to show his work we build new audiences for it and draw attention to his plight. We also wish to show our support for those people in Hong Kong who have come out on to the streets to protest in greater numbers than in any city in the West. To withdraw from ART HK and not show work by the artist would make us complicit in the authorities’ attempt to silence him and his supporters.

• London art blog Cathedral of Shit applauds Lisson for the explanation, but says the issue is more "complex":

...This isn’t a problem if you haven’t got an issue with China’s human rights abuses – and plenty of commercial galleries haven’t. Peculiarly, it’s more of a problem for those galleries who have, to their credit, gone on the record as disagreeing with China’s human rights record and in particular, the imprisonment of Ai Wei Wei. Which goes to prove, it’s not easy having a moral compass and working in the commercial art world – good luck to those, such as the Lisson, who seem to.

• The Art Newspaper notes that Lisson is joined by galleries like neugerriemschneider in Berlin (which is now showing Ai's work), Swiss dealer Urs Meile, and others in exhibiting at Art HK.

• Yesterday, Modern Art Notes' Tyler Green asked, "Is it appropriate for an American art museum [and specifically the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which plans to show its collection at the Palace Museum in Beijing] to be engaged in this kind of transaction with the Chinese when the Chinese have demonstrated their hostility to — and fear of — their country’s most internationally prominent artist?

• Via Artnet.com, German curator Roger Buergel, who brought Ai to Documenta in 2007, has this explanation for the "enormous passivity" of the western art world over Ai's plight: "[M]ost of them are glad to be rid of Ai Weiwei." Says Buergel: "Ai Weiwei is in the right. His arrest is a political crime. That's also why it's so important that the West protests. Yet our artists are obviously lacking in their sense of historical awareness."

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel critic Mary Louise Schumacher asks whether the Milwaukee Art Museum, which is showing a traveling exhibition of Chinese art, The Emperor’s Private Paradise, this summer, should protest Ai's captivity. She writes that the museum has been silent on the issue. Museum director Dan Keegan offered this flaccid defense: “The political situation is extremely complex and the Museum is sensitive to the discussion that Ai Weiwei’s detention has created and we are obviously concerned for his well being. To that point, I think that our ‘Summer of China’ can play a role in expanding understanding and forwarding the dialogue between cultures.”

• Kudos to those in the art world -- from institutions like Dia and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which yesterday hosted a 24-hour protest, to artists worldwide, including just yesterday, Damien Hirst -- who have gone where Keegan won't. A measure of the lack of optimism about Ai's situation: Protests are planned to commemorate Ai's 10oth day of captivity, nearly two months from now, while others I've talked to are considering 90-day observances.

Ai Weiwei Update: 05.05.11

• Neugerriemschneider is hosting a show of Ai Weiwei's work, advertised by a huge "Where is Ai Weiwei?" banner on the Berlin gallery's facade by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (above). The New York Times on the exhibition (thanks, Kelsey):

Ai’s meditative installation features two sculptures, “Rock” and “Tree,” and offers a sanctuary in which the solace of nature has been fabricated with the help of premodern technology. “Rock” consists of a series of white porcelain outcroppings, fabricated in the city of Jingdezhen (the supposed birthplace of porcelain) and painted with a swirling blue motif. “Tree” assembles two trees together from segments of fallen trunks harvested in southern China, using a traditional Chinese technique involving giant screws and that adds a kinetic twist to their natural shape. The arrangement encourages a Taoist interpretation — the white “rocks” also resemble a formation of clouds floating across the floor, suggesting a temporary union of Heaven and Earth in which distinctions between the natural and synthetic have been collapsed.

• NPR talks to Tang Chin, aka Tangerine, the 22-year old graffiti artist who's been stenciling "Who's afrai of Ai Weiwei?" stencils around Hong Kong. She faces a maximum of ten years in prison if captured by police for property damage. "I have to thank the police for drawing so much attention to this issue. Even if I have to go to jail, I think that would be a very, very worth it price to pay," she says. Others are now downloading Tangerine's stencil to do their own graffiti, and one artist is doing "flash graffiti" -- projections on city walls -- of the imagery.

• As writer/curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist calls Ai's blog -- released in book form last month by The MIT Press --"one of the greatest social sculptures of our time," The Telegraph posts the detained artist's top 10 tweets, translated into English.

• Through their "Ai Weiwei Works Here" campaign, Signal Fire's Amy Harwood and Ryan Pierce offer a downloadable "image as a graphic for screens and printed matter, and thereby brings Weiwei into homes, studios, streets, and virtual spaces."

• “The more a city embraces diversity and tolerates dissent, the stronger it becomes,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the unveiling of Ai's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads sculpture in Central Park Wednesday. Calling on China to release the artist, he said, “And there is no place on earth that gives freer rein to more voices and viewpoints than New York City ... This is a message from America to the whole world that we are the place where people can come and express themselves. China would be well served to listen to our message and to copy us.”

• Sculptor Anish Kapoor on Tuesday: "I wish to dedicate my new work, Leviathan at the Grand Palais, Paris, to my colleague Ai Weiwei. His arrest, disappearance and alleged torture are unacceptable. When governments silence artists it bears witness to their barbarity."

• Now it appears that reporting on Ai is a jailable offense: The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Caijing magazine journalist Zhang Jialong, who'd written and tweeted about Ai, has been missing since having a "talk" with Beijing police on April 28. Ai's friend, journalist Wen Tao, has been missing since April 3.

Ai Weiwei Update: 04.13.11

• Video: Alison Klaymon, creator of the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, introduces us to 38-year old Global Times journalist Wen Tao (pictured), a friend of Ai Weiwei's who was taken by plainclothes police hours after Ai was detained on Apr. 3; his whereabouts remain unknown, and no charges have been announced against him.

• Shortly before his arrest, Ai was reportedly invited, twice, to be part of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), "an advisory body made up of non-Communist party members, including high-profile figures such as artists and athletes." The body's role is "to engage influential figures outside the party." Ai's response to that query isn't known.

• Director Madeleine Grynsztejn and others at the MCA Chicago have signed on to the Guggenheim Foundation petition calling for Ai's release. The petition now has nearly 69,000 signatures.

• Artist An Xiao Mina is counting the hours since Ai's disappearance at 8:04 AM China Standard Time on Apr. 3 by placing one sunflower seed in a jar for each hour.

• Beijing-based political writer Russell Leigh Moses asks whether the Chinese Communist party has given up on reform.

• "Who's afraid of Ai Weiwei" stencils are appearing in Hong Kong.

• Random factoid: Ai reportedly has "ridiculous blackjack skills," and blackjack players are angered by his detention.

• Eerie to see Ai's Twitter feed -- home to more than 60,000 tweets -- silent. His last entry: April 3.

Earlier:
Ai Weiwei Update: 04.11.11
Ai Weiwei Update: 04.12.11

Tuesday in Minneapolis: The Walker gathers 1001 chairs for Ai Weiwei -- and artistic expression

Ai Weiwei, Fairytale, 2007
While Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is free, it's not the kind of freedom I'd want: He can't speak to the media for one year, he can't travel, he hasn't been back on Twitter or his blog, and you can bet he'll be monitored non-stop by "China's all-seeing eye," to use Naomi Klein's words. Noting that more than 500 people associated with democracy movements have been detained in the last four months, Newsweek reports that "China’s persecution of dissidents and political enemies of the state hasn’t been this ruthless in decades."

To mark the 100th day since his detention by Beijing police -- and to express solidarity with Ai and the many unnamed artists, journalists, bloggers and dissidents who are still imprisoned in China -- the Walker is hosting a 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei event on Tuesday, July 12. Like the April protests worldwide, the event takes its inspiration from Ai's 2007 work Fairytale: 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs — an installation at Documenta 12 consisted of 1001 empty late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden chairs. The Walker asks people to drop off chairs at the Walker's Open Field anytime tomorrow to be assembled with other chairs for a 6 pm observation, which will be kicked off with remarks by museum director Olga Viso.

"We believe that no artistic voice should ever be silenced in any society," said Viso, who also spoke out when Ai was still detained. "We envision the chairs on the Open Field as a reminder of artists across the world -- artists we may not even know --- who have been lost and who face repression and censorship every day. Weiwei's art and his recent detainment have brought this reality into disturbing and important focus."

The Walker will be screening Alison Klayman's 18-minute Frontline segment, "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" throughout the day. It notes that it also plans to screen Klayman's documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry at the museum after it is completed next spring.

The Walker notes that museum admission is free all day tomorrow because of the event, and asks that chairs be dropped off during the day and picked up between 6:15 and 8. Viso speaks at 6.

This Sunday: 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, Fairytale, 2007

An email from Creative Time:

A question posted on Facebook about what we, as an arts community, can do to support the safe release of Ai Weiwei sparked great ideas, including one by curator Steven Holmes to reenact Ai Weiwei's project Fairytale: 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs—an installation which was comprised of 1001 late Ming and Qing Dynasty wooden chairs at Documenta 12 in 2007 in Kassel, Germany—in front of Chinese embassies and consulates around the world. This Sunday, April 17, at 1 PM local time, supporters are invited to participate in 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei, by bringing a chair and gathering outside Chinese embassies and consulates to sit peacefully in support of the artist's immediate release.

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei is an internationally regarded figure who has fought for artistic freedom and for freedom of speech throughout his distinguished career, envisioning and shaping a more just and equitable society through his work. He has been missing since his arrest on April 3rd in Beijing. Referencing the spirit of his work, 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei calls for his immediate release, supporting the right of artists to speak and work freely in China and around the world.

To participate, find an embassy near you.

Confirmed: Change.org hit by Denial of Service attack over Ai Weiwei petition

Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org, confirms via email that a Chinese DDOS attack has knocked the site offline. Change is hosting the Guggenheim Foundation's Free Ai Weiwei petition, which had more 92,000 signatures at last check.

Update: As of 1 pm Central Tuesday, the petition is back online, but a note states that visitors can expect intermittent downtime. "This attack is a sign of the influence of grassroots activists, and Change.org will continue to stand for the free speech and freedom to organize for people everywhere," the site states.

Update 04.20.11: Change sends a note: They've hired a firm that deals specifically with DDoS attacks, and "we are now back at 100%."

Rattray sends a press release Change.org is sending out:

Chinese Hackers Attack Change.org Platform in Reaction to Ai Weiwei Campaign

Attackers use distributed denial of service attack to bring down the world’s fastest growing social action platform after more than 90,000 people in 175 countries call for release of Chinese dissident artist.

19 April, 2011 – Chinese hackers temporarily brought down the world’s fastest-growing social action platform after more than 90,000 people in 175 countries endorsed an online call for the release of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Weiwei, best known for his role in the construction of the Beijing Olympic stadium and his recent Sunflower Seeds exhibition at the Tate Modern, has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the Chinese government in recent years, in particular over the handling of the 2008 earthquake in the country’s Sichuan province.

The cyber attack on Change.org follows the viral success of a petition calling for Ai Weiwei’s release by leading global art museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern, London, as well as the Association of Art Museum Directors. The campaign is attracting more than 10,000 new supporters a day and is now the most popular international campaign on Change.org, the world’s fastest growing activism platform with some 3.5 million monthly visitors.

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack began early Monday and made the site completely inaccessible for a few hours. Change.org issued a formal request for urgent assistance to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian Pacific Affairs within hours of the attack.

“We do not know the reason or exact source of these attacks,” said Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org. “All we know is that after the unprecedented success of a campaign by leading global art museums using our platform to call on the Chinese government to release Ai Weiwei, we became the victims of highly sophisticated denial of service attacks from locations in China.”

“We've notified the U.S. State Department of the situation and asked for their immediate assistance,” Rattray added. “Our engineers have been able to keep up the site during parts of the attack, but we've had some down time and without government assistance there are limits to what we can do.”

Change.org, a platform which allows anyone, anywhere to launch online social action campaigns, has been blocked in China at various points over the last few years.

Ai Weiwei Update: 04.15.11

• Dia Art Foundation director Philippe Vergne -- who gave his first thoughts on Ai Weiwei's detention to Eyeteeth readers -- pens a piece for Artinfo. Two snippets:

...I do not want to be free among individuals who value regression, fear, and stagnation — I want to be jailed with the villains. I want to be in detention with David Wojnarowicz, with Jean Genet, with Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, with Ai Weiwei. I'd rather be imprisoned with artists, intellectuals, and citizens whose work and actions makes us think and question rather than bend over with a smile to the oppression of convention....

...[Ai's] art is his ability to be a poet, a sculptor, a politician, an architect, a merchant, an activist, a citizen, a trickster. Ai Weiwei is the fou du roi, the sole person who is authorized to poke at the king because the king knows that his position is only as powerful as his acceptance of the critic. The minute the buffoon is silenced, the king is naked, and the king knows that it is not pretty...

• Vergne says he's taking part in Sunday's sit-in protest, a Creative Time project that's happening at 1 pm local time at Chinese embassies worldwide. Find locations here.

• More disappearances: Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer with ties to Ai, has been missing since Thursday night, The Guardian reports, and designer Liu Zhenggang, who works for Ai's wife's company FAKE, has been detained by plainclothes police.

• Bozidar Brazda, writing on Ai a few days ago, mentions China's so-called "50-Cent Army," a group I suspect is active on Reddit: "[M]embers of China's online 50-Cent Army (so named for the half dollar they earn per pro-CCP comment that they post) claim that Weiwei masterminded his own arrest and that it is indeed a work of art, a suggestion that gives the whole affair a kind of Enter Through The Gift Shop -- by way of Kafka -- vibe."

• China has refused to grant a visa to German author and scholar Tilman Spengler, who was scheduled to be part of the early April opening of the art exhibition Age of Enlightenment in Beijing. His crime: he praised imprisoned Nobel-prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Some MPs in Germany are calling for the exhibition to be shut down following Ai Weiwei's arrest: While featuring works from three German museums and receiving funding from the German government, the show represents anything but Enlightenment values, the MPs say.

• CNNGo looks at the active response to Ai's detention by artists in Hong Kong.

• One year ago, The Art Newspaper trumpeted the exhibition as "bold and timely," noting China's "blazing resurgence." From the April 2010 edition:

China’s leaders recognise that culture can buy goodwill abroad. High profile exchanges like the Enlightenment exhibition can convey openness and sensitivity as well as confidence.

• The petition: 84,000 voices and counting.

Ai Weiwei Update: 05.16.11

Image via the Facebook page Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

• Forty-three days into his captivity, Ai Weiwei has been allowed to briefly see his wife, Lu Qing, for the first time. The 15-minute, highly monitored visit Sunday didn't yield much information about the conditions of his imprisonment, but he appeared healthy, dispelling rumors that he'd been tortured (to his elderly mother's relief). Lu noted that he wasn't wearing prison clothes and his beard wasn't shaved, suggesting he may be under house arrest instead of in a jail. According to reports, authorities warned Lu about talking the press, lest she worsen Ai's case.

• "I could see redness in his eyes," Lu said of the visit. "It was obvious that without freedom to express himself he was not behaving naturally even with me, someone from his family. He seemed conflicted, contained, his face was tense ... We could not talk about the economic charges or other stuff, mainly about the family and health. We were careful, we knew that the deal could be broken at any moment, so we were careful."

• In a late April interview with CBS, released Friday, Ai's mother pleaded, "Save my son. Save my son. I hear that he's suffering now -- (they're) treating him cruelly and inhumanely." Seventy-eight-year old Gao Ying also said that Ai has no ties to the Jasmine Revolution, Falun Gong or any other groups that have run afoul of the Chinese government. "[H]e was taken because he was protecting the rights of ordinary citizens and speaking for them," she said. "With many things that happened, he just had to speak out -- he said a lot, criticizing the government for not abiding by the rule of law in dealing with certain incidents."

• The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego has just bought two pieces from Ai's "Marble Chairs" series, works that gain resonance the longer Ai is missing (i.e. the longer the artist is absent from his work). This week the museum will host a silent protest: "Beginning at 11 AM on Thursday, May 19 and continuing through 11 AM on Friday, May 20, volunteer participants will occupy two traditionally styled Chinese chairs for one-hour periods. This 24-hour sit-in references Ai Weiwei’s sculpture series, Marble Chair, two of which are currently on view in the Museum’s exhibition, Prospect 2011."

• CNN offers a nice view of Ai's show at Lisson Gallery in London, which includes a clip from an old interview with the artist: "Art is not just decoration. Art is not just items of the collectors' habit. Art is about social change. It's about how we define our time and our culture."

• Had to reread this headline three times: "Ai Arrest Jangles Beijing Art Scene Nerves as Fish Head, Bike Go on Show."

• Filmmaker Alison Klayman: "I will appear on The Colbert Report tonight. Tune in to see my first television appearance, hear about my experiences with Weiwei and maybe even speculate about what Weiwei would think about Colbert's portrait recently auctioned at Philips de Pury"

Ai Weiwei Update: 04.27.11

• Chinese rock musician Zuoxiao Zuzhou and his wife, Xiao Li, were reportedly stopped by authorities Wednesday and have not been heard from since. Zuoxiao, a sculptor, photographer and member of the band No, penned a piece for a Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper Tuesday entitled, "Who doesn't love Ai Weiwei?"

• NYU law professor Jerome Cohen notes that Ai's legal counsel hasn't been permitted to meet with him; he says the artist's case illustrates how "far China’s police are not only from adhering to the standards of fair criminal justice enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the government signed in 1998 but has yet to ratify, but also from adhering to their own country’s criminal procedure law." He writes:

[W]hatever the evidence being assembled about tax evasion or other charges, that this was not the motivation for Ai’s detention. This case started out on a “detain first and look for justification later” basis. If evidence sufficient to sustain a conviction is found, the case will become a preeminent example of what criminal justice experts call “selective prosecution.” Ai has been singled out from a large number of potentially suspected offenders not because of the magnitude of any alleged economic crimes but because of his creative and eye-catching political challenges to the regime and his defense of human rights.

• China wants to "deepen mutual understanding," as CNN puts it, in talks with the U.S. this week, but human rights -- including Ai Weiwei's detention -- is off the table.

• New York's Central Park will host Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads, but, oddly, the park department's press release reportedly doesn't mention Ai's ongoing imprisonment.

• First Ai, now Confucius? A 31-foot bronze statue of Confucius was removed from Tiananmen Square "under mysterious circumstances." Nobody has any answers about where the sculpture went, but ArtInfo.com notes:

Under Mao, Confucius was a banned figure, since the Communist leader saw his philosophy of harmony and submission to family and duty as dangerous remnants of China's feudal past. Now, on the home page of the hardline Communist Web site maoflag.net, the character for "demolish" has been scrawled on an image of the statue. A maoflag.net user named Jiangxi Li Jianjun exulted that "the statue of the slave-owning sorcerer Confucius has been driven from Tiananmen Square!"

• In a visit to China, Swiss Interior Minister Didier Burkhalter made mention, if tepid, of Ai's plight.

• A video of Ai Weiwei graffiti in Hong Kong.

• ArtInfo: "Filmmaker Flees Capital After Beijing Documentary Festival Shutters Amid Crackdown on Intellectuals."

• The petition: 124,000 signatures strong.

Photo: Flier posted at East 4th Street and 2nd Avenue, New York; photo by Antoine Schweitzer via Doryun Chong.

Ai Weiwei Update: 04.21.11

Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands

• The Chinese hacker attack on Change.org for hosting the Free Ai Weiwei petition seems to have been a publicity boon: Before the attack, the petition had around 92,000 signatures; today it has more than 112,000.

• The denial of service attack continues, but in an email forwarded to Eyeteeth, Change.org's online marketing director says the group has hired a firm that specializes in DDOS attacks and that "we are now back at 100%." In a blog post, Change's Benjamin Joffe-Walt says the site is urging the U.S. State Department to break its silence and publicly condemn the attack. He asks supporters to tweet the following:

@statedept, condemn Chinese hacker attack on @guggenheim’s @change campaign to free Ai Weiwei @aiww: http://chn.ge/fnOU4H #freeaiww

• The Telegraph (UK) takes western governments to task for its "shameful silence" on Ai and the plight of other jailed dissidents in China: "[I]nstead of continuing with their craven kowtow towards Beijing, the leaders of the free world should stand together and demand the release of this brave man."

• Concurring with that sentiment are Guy Verhofstadt and Edward McMillan-Scott, former Belgian prime minister and vice presidenet of the European Parliament, respectively. Noting the west's "limp 'concern'" for Ai's safety, they write, "The EU and the U.S. should stand unequivocally behind reformists in the world's remaining tyrannies."

• Salman Rushdie on Ai Weiwei: "We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight."

• Alison Klayman's film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry should be ready for release "in the fall."

• John Zhang of The Epoch Times writes on the "Chinese media smear campaign" against Ai.

• Despite his detention, which began following his Apr. 3 arrest, Ai has been given a professorship at Berlin University of the Arts. A few days before his arrest, Ai said he'd be moving to Berlin to set up a studio, although he didn't plan on living there full time. "But I would have no other choice if my life or my existence were to be somehow threatened."

Ai Weiwei Update: 04.12.11

Installation of PLATOON's Free Ai Weiwei project in Berlin

• China is "unhappy" that the international community is rallying around Ai Weiwei. "The Chinese people also feel baffled -- why do some people in some countries treat a crime suspect as a hero?" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. I suppose Ai, too, is "unhappy." What with being kidnapped without charge and prevented from contacting his family and all.

• The New Yorker's Beijing reporter Evan Osnos looks into "whether the world is paying undue attention to his case, in light of the fact, the argument goes, that the vast majority of the Chinese public has never heard of him. Does the fact that Ai’s professional impact is overwhelmingly felt abroad mean that the world is overstating the importance of his detention—and disregarding the more widespread, routine concerns of the Chinese people?" (It's true that Ai's detention has gotten far more attention than have disappearances of countless lesser known activists, writers, artists -- including photographer Guo Gai, who I'll have more on soon -- and regular citizens.)

• Chinese officials are now questioning Lu Qing, Ai's wife, and asking her to produce tax documents, more evidence that the government is looking into Ai's financial dealings. Trouble is, Lu couldn't produce the documents because law enforcement has already confiscated the family's papers.

• The Guardian also reports that Wen Tao, Ai's friend, is unaccounted for since he was detained at the same time as Ai. "On Monday assistants from the studio said Ai's accountant and driver, Ms Hu and Zhang Jingsong – also known as Xiao Pang – had gone missing." Finally, supporters say architect and designer Liu Zhenggang, a collaborator of Ai's, has also been missing since Ai was taken.

• Walker Art Center director Olga Viso, who gave us her comment on Ai's detention last week, follows up with a blog post in which she urges readers to sign the Guggenheim Foundation's petition, which at nearly 30,000 signers has "tremendous momentum."

• The Christian Science Monitor: Five famous jailed dissidents in China

Earlier: Ai Weiwei Update: 04.11.11

Ai Weiwei Update: 05.09.11

• Two pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have been arrested for doing Ai Weiwei graffiti there, AFP reports. The pair, who weren't named, have been released on bail, but have a June 8 hearing. Activists have been painting and projecting Ai's image, using a stencil originally created by Chin Tangerine. Via Facebook, she tells me that "things are good" and that the police effort to find her "really doesn't bother me that much." She says she's not involved with the recent projections of the Ai stencil by Cpak Ming (pictured, via ArtAsiaPacific), but she hopes to collaborate with him soon. "Ming uploaded some kind of tutorial and inspired by him, a lot of people are trying it out," she writes. "It's exhilarating."

• The China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong says it's confirmed that a new Q & A between Ai Weiwei and an "opinion channeler" -- a member the so-called 50-Cent Army, a group paid to leave pro-China comments on the internet -- is legit. The interview was conducted Mar. 22 and published May 5.

• When Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner are in China this week, Ai's imprisonment without charge is off the table. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai says, "I think it is advisable for the United States to pay more attention to the development of China in terms of human rights, rather than being preoccupied with individual cases."

• Nicholas Logsdail, director of London's Lisson Gallery, where an exhibition of Ai's work opens on Friday:

"In arresting Ai Weiwei, I believe [Chinese authorities] have failed to understand what it means to be an artist. They have failed to be culturally aware. He is exactly the kind of person they should have onside. He's actually much more dangerous now, under arrest, than he ever was before. I think he is a great global cultural ambassador for the new China, but this arrest is making China's new cultural revolution look rather unrevolutionary."

• Critic Jerry Salz hated Ai's installation of millions of porcelain sunflower seeds at Tate Modern, but regretting his snap judgment went back for a second look. And:

As I stood on this field of crunchy porcelain bits, I suddenly gleaned an approximation of China itself. A hundred million seeds and the huge physical field and my tiny place in it allowed me to actually sense the billion that is China. In true colonialist fashion, I was part of the millions in the West who were now walking on the billions of the East. It was an extraordinary illustration of infinity, impossibility, life, politics, proximity and individuality. Crowds happily walked on the seeds; it was like a metaphysical beach, or limbo. Kids ran around, played games or buried one another. Like many others, and in violation of the rules, I took home a handful of seeds. My wife kept pointing out gray clouds that puffed up wherever people were walking. She also pointed out that our hands and clothes were covered in the dust.

I thought nothing of it.

I should have. It turns out those clouds were the gray slip being ground off the porcelain seeds as they rubbed together underfoot. Two days later authorities shut down the piece. A notice posted on the Tate’s site reads in part: "We have been advised that the interaction of visitors with the sculpture can cause dust which could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time. In consequence, Tate, in consultation with the artist, has decided not to allow members of the public to walk across the sculpture." Now it can only be seen the way I saw it that first day, from above or outside. I’m saddened that you can’t see it the way I did -- but the metaphor is unmistakably powerful all the same. The coming together of these civilizations and numbers produces a toxic cloud.

• The petitions: 131,000 signatures, plus 118,000 more.

Chairs -- including Ai Weiwei's -- gather at the Walker Art Center

As I write this, chairs are gathering along Minneapolis' Hennepin Avenue in anticipation of an observation tonight of the 100th day of artist Ai Weiwei's arrest and the continued imprisonment of hundreds of dissidents in China today. Inspired by Ai's work, Fairytale: 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs, the Walker Art Center has asked the community to bring chairs, and they have -- 250 or so already. While many more are yet to come -- yours, hopefully -- one has yet to be placed: An office chair from Ai Weiwei's studio has been sent from Beijing and will be present for a moment of silence at 6 pm tonight.

The urgency of Ai's plight has diminished some -- he's been freed, although he remains under a media gag order that, according to the BBC, includes Twitter -- but I commend the Walker for sticking with the event nonetheless, and using it as a way to bear witness to China's continued crackdown on creative expression and political speech among those without Ai's star power.

And for making the event so visible. For those unfamiliar with Hennepin Avenue, it's a major thoroughfare near downtown Minneapolis, and while it often provides an unpleasantly cacophonous front yard for the Walker, the eight or 10 lanes of roadway provide a perfect stage for such a highly visible event. As I dropped off our chairs, quizzical passersby peered from car windows and cyclists rolled up with cameras to shoot the quirky scene: an artist's sculptural chair, children's toy furniture, rummage sale chairs, a plywood chair by ro/lu, a "gold-plated" lawnchair, among them.

Most fitting, though, is the event's placement beneath Lawrence Weiner's wall piece, a Walker icon placed on the building's facade of bricks, that simply reads, "BITS AND PIECES PUT TOGETHER TO PRESENT A SEMBLANCE OF A WHOLE" -- a testament, in this context, to the potential power of collective action. Naysayers may scoff at the effectiveness of this kind of arty assemblage of mismatched chairs in affecting Chinese policy half a world away, and I suppose they're right. But this is the realm of art, which, for me anyway, puts the power of this collectivism more in the realm of spirituality than policy. If we ask what the effectiveness of art is, then we should also ask about the effectiveness of a prayer or a hope or a spiritual practice that connects its adherents with those in their community or those around the world.

Maybe that's why the Walker's site is perfect for the event: This repository of art -- which I've called "divinity for the reality-based community" -- is situated across the road from a line of churches, including the country's first Catholic basilica.

Update: Here are some photos from the event, including this shot of the chair Ai would sit at to use his studio computer.

Amnesty Int'l: China deflecting criticism through Ai release

Ai Weiwei, released after 80 days. Photo: Ng Han Guan/AP

"Ai Weiwei’s release on bail by the Chinese government must not diminish the international outcry about other activists detained during this year’s ‘Jasmine’ crackdown," Amnesty International writes, noting that the artist is out on bail just as Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is heading to the UK and Germany, countries where Ai is popular and has shown work (think: his sunflower seed installation at Tate and his show at neugerriemschneider in Berlin, to name two).

“His release on bail can be seen as a tokenistic move by the government to deflect mounting criticism," Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Asia Pacific, says. “It is vital that the international outcry over Ai Weiwei be extended to those activists still languishing in secret detention or charged with inciting subversion.”

More than 130 activists, journalists, bloggers and lawyers are still held by Chinese authorities. Among them are Ai's associates, Wen Tao, Hu Mingfen, Liu Zhenggang and Zhang Jinsong.

“While Ai Weiwei’s release is an important step, he must now be granted his full liberty, and not be held in illegal house arrest as has been the pattern with so many others recently released from arbitrary detention," Baber said. “The reality is that his long detention without charge violated China’s own legal process."

Roderic Wye, a China analyst at a London think tank, offers a different perspective on the timing with The Guardian:

"I think the timing is one of coincidence rather than a deliberate signal. In the post-Tiananmen days, there was the occasional high-profile person released, but usually before a US presidential visit rather than a trip to Europe, with all due respect to our leaders. The whole point for China is: we don't give in to pressure these days, China is big enough to make its own decisions without taking foreign pressure into account."