'Untitled'
Picnic for Ai Weiwei at Harvard University

video: www.youtube.com/silkcoatscollective#p/a/u/0/RYzmfaO05A0

As remaining being silent, institutions are confirming censorship and preventing the free speech (practice of parrhesia) gradually... dangerously...
So what step to take... an artistic gesture against it?

On May 1st, 2011 the Silk Coat Collective organized an action at Ai Weiwei's installation at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Untitled" picnics will take place every Sunday at 11 am as long the installation is up....

The Chinese artist and architect's installation, Untitled (2011), memorializes the thousands of school children who died in the major earthquake in China's Sichuan province in May 2008. A site-specific work of 5,335 identical school backpacks represents the exact number of children killed during the earthquake and in the subsequent collapses of poorly constructed school buildings.

A related sound piece by the dissident artist, a voice recording reciting the names of the victims, titled Remembrance (2010), will play in the space. The counting of victims and collection of details about their deaths are the products of a "citizens' investigation" conducted by Weiwei and his studio, leading to growing government censure, beatings, and the demolition of his studio in Shanghai.

Ai Weiwei was detained by Chinese authorities on April 3rd, 2011 and has not been released thus far.

The pieces of paper we placed inside the bags are copies of the missing notice put out in the streets of Beijing by Ai Weiwei's mother and sister after his disappearance.

The soundtrack in the video is from the reading of the names of each of the children that died in the earthquake. It is taken from Ai Weiwei's 'Commemoration' piece and also heard at the 'Untitled' installation at Harvard. The full version can be found online here: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/05/ai-weiwei-%E8%89%BE%...

Copyleft 2011 Silk Coats Collective



Hong Kong, 15.May.2001, P.Tan.

check also: www.freeaiweiwei.org