Spectre discussion...

From: Andreas Broeckmann
Subject: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 14, 2011 3:03:13 PM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

On April 3, internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound.
Sign now! we need to reach 100,000 signatures!
http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei#?opt_new=f&opt_fb=t

'The members of the international arts community express their concern for Ai's freedom and disappointment in China's reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought, the keys to "soft power" and cultural influence.

The initiative has been taken working closely with Jerome Cohen, the leading Chinese human rights lawyer who is working on Weiwei's case, and who believes that this action could be effective.
To support the petition you can link it on your website, on Facebook and Twitter sites, in order to quickly reach millions of people.'

We need to reach 100,000 signatures.

From: heath bunting
Subject: Re: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 14, 2011 8:06:19 PM GMT+02:00
To: Andreas Broeckmann
Cc: spectre@mikrolisten.de

andreas broeckmann

can you explain why you are campaigning for this person ?

are you sure he not guilty of tax evasion ?

does the fact that this campaign is supported by so many elite organisation not make you question this campaign ?

i didn't note much interest or support in my case when i was arrested every time i entered or exited the united kingdom or when i was disappeared by the UK secret police and accused falsely of bomb threats at a london airport - i was facing up to 7 years in prison

this was a result of my work with borders and identity and i still live
under surveillance

in the similar manner that no one benefits from my rise through the art stratosphere, hence no rise or stardom, who is benefiting from Ai Weiwei and his hyper inflation in the attention economy ?

Ai Weiwei campaign seems a classic case of elite people protecting their own transgressions (tax evasion) and profiting from disaster capitalism rather than universal human rights and human rights workers, such as artists

would there be an international campaign by elite institutions to support a independent artist, such as myself ?

this seems a very similar situation to julian assange. instead of the social network supporting a member of the blood rank, we should be supporting social justice and human rights and those that work using such methods

Ai Weiwei is clearly a member of the international blood rank posing a social networker - an astroturfer

this strikes me a co-option of the social network for the purposes and values of the elite

hope you can answer some of these questions

hope you are well

heath bunting

From: Andreas Broeckmann
Subject: Re: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 15, 2011 8:14:47 AM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

heath,

thank you for these questions. i will think about them carefully, since i assume that these are the kind of questions that people like myself will have to answer when they get in the hands of the chinese stasi, should the chinese stasi choose to ask me questions about why i supported a campaign for the release of ai weiwei.

http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei

because you now know that i have this association when reading your questions, i assume that you will understand that i would rather not enter into this interrogation now. such interrogations are structured to make people say contradictory things which harm them and others.

i respect you as an artist and your work (e.g. http://status.irational.org/ ), and because of that respect i choose to assume that the imputation in your questions - that ai weiwei might be in prison for good reason - is rhetorical and strategic. (besides, i believe that people who evade taxes should not be put in prison, but forced to pay taxes.)

i support the campaign for the reslease of ai weiwei because i believe that he is wrongfully imprisoned, like many other people in china (and elsewhere). he is a figure-head, and the campaign has, in my understanding, an important 'symbolic' dimension in that it is directed against the lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the arts.

i did not know that you were arrested. it is of course a problem of the attention economy that i didn't know about this. is it cynical to say that, while i despise that fact that you get arrested regularly because of your work with borders and identity, i am glad that you have been arrested by people acting on behalf of authorities that released you again soon afterwards, rather than also arresting your partners and keeping you under arrest away from the public eye for an (as of yet) indefinite period of time. the latter is what is happening to ai weiwei.

should this happen to you and i know about it, i will also support the campaign for your release.

regards,
-a

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