EARTH ~

ai wei wei



"In 2006, even though he could barely type, China's most famous artist started blogging. For more than three years, Ai Wei Wei turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary, criticism of government policy, thoughts on art and architecture, and autobiographical writings. He wrote about the Sichuan earthquake (and posted a list of the schoolchildren who died because of the government's "tofu-dregs engineering"), reminisced about Andy Warhol and the East Village art scene, described the irony of being investigated for "fraud" by the Ministry of Public Security, made a modest proposal for tax collection. Then, on May 28, 2009, Chinese authorities shut down the blog. This book offers a collection of Ai's online writings translated in to English — the most complete, public documentation of the original Chinese blog available in any language."

( the blog was hosted on sina.com.cn )




MIT Press
edited & translated by Lee Ambrozy






photo: peter parks/Getty