Thanks for following

Darren.

What is Tea for Ai Weiwei? Well the way it works is that I serve Jasmine tea free of charge – but for that cuppa I ask you to visit one or both of the online petitions and sign for Weiwei’s release.

I would like to assemble a gathering of artists, arts workers, enthusiasts and others to participate as a group in Monica Ross’s ‘Anniversary – Acts of Memory” at Brighton Festival on Sunday 29 May by 2pm.

The gathering is in support of the artist Ai Weiwei currently being unlawfully detained by the Chinese government.
I plan to memorize and recite Article 9 and 19 from UDHR.

Article 9 – No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 19 – Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

I am hoping to provide free Jasmine tea – a small reference to the Jasmine revolution with which Ai is associated.
If wish to join me please meet at the tea station.

It would be great to bring together as many participants together as possible. If you are a Hhinese speaker willing to memorize and recite these two Articles or if you are able to help in any other way Please, do get in touch.
Ai Weiwei’s whereabouts and condition are unknown and rumors of torture are circulating. See http://www.chinaaid.org/2011/04/tortured-by-police-artist-ai-weiwei.html

and http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37649/ai-weiwei-torture-reports-surface-and-anish-kapoor-calls-for-mass-protest/

He has been missing for more than 40 days now.

I find it hard to believe that with all the media and arts sector coverage the weight of the world can be so ineffective in aiding an individual (Ai is not the only one missing but he has received the most media coverage).

I do not know if Ai Weiwei has committed an offence (allegedly tax evasion is the crime ‘picked out’  in order to facilitate a means to silence him) but that is beside the point. More to the point is that the Chinese government according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and apparently according to their own law are illegally detaining Ai.

It would be easy to place Ai onto some form of pedestal but the point is that the means the Chinese government are employing are wrong regardless of the charge against Ai.

Please join me to stand in unison for Ai and against the Chinese government at the Old Bowling Green, Queens Park, Brighton on the 29th May from 3pm.

A link to Acts of Memory is posted below

http://www.actsofmemory.net/

Anniversary — an act of memory,
recitations from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Monica Ross and Co-Recitors
Brighton Festival 2011 Freedom Picnic, from 2pm, 29 MAY
Anniversary — an act of memory is a performance series in 60 acts focusing on the importance and relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Launched in December 2008 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Declaration, it features solo, collective and multi-lingual recitations from memory of the entire UDHR by Monica Ross and Co-Recitors. To date more than 200 people have memorised and recited articles in over 30 languages.
www.actsofmemory.net
www.youtube.com/actofmemory
www.brightonfestival.org
If you would like to memorize and recite a relevant article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a language of your choice please can you also let Rebecca Fidler at Brighton Festival know so that Rebecca can keep you posted as the form of the recitation develops;  Rebecca.Fidler@brightonfestival.org

The Declaration is available in more than 370 languages from here http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/SearchByLang.aspx

I believe the detention of Ai Weiwei to be a form of kidnapping or hostage taking. The Ransom? Ai’s basic human rights and human dignity and maybe the rights and dignity of countless other Chinese artists.

1-2-3-4. Fabrica 2010

Our Infinite Day-trip. Grey Area 2009

Group show at Wimbledon School of Art 2008

The book is ‘Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will’ by Judith Schalansky published by Penguin 2009.

Aside from my studio work I have another practice going on. Of course the two cross over but they do seem also separate activities. This other work is an engagement with Islands and is informed in part by the locations in which they are installed. The first of these temporary installations took place on a small, sparsely populated island off the west coast of Canada in 2008 where I installed two works on the island’s near inaccessible coastline.  The work was funded by the Arts Council and couldn’t have existed without their financial assistance.

A neon text was powered by a small generator and flashed its hopeful message to the few inhabitants and boat crews that passed by and a sculpture built from tent fabric, poles and guy lines was ‘pitched’ on a small outcrop that had been built for past and no doubt future generations of loggers to access the island and load barges with their bounty. The project turned into much more than I had hoped. First it was something of an expedition to get the work to the site and maintain it. Everything was done by canoe or on foot, tides permitting. The works needed regular attention; the generator needed to be refueled twice a day and due to the nature of the works and the environment it was important to check that no harm came to them and most importantly to the local wildlife. It was whilst performing one of these checks at low tide which meant I could do part of the check by foot, that I crossed paths with a black bear. I didn’t hang around but slowly, quietly retraced my steps back to the cabin. Later I was able to return and found that the bear had taken something of an interest in the sculpture and left a beautiful muddy paw print on the inside. The reality is of course that the sculpture was in the way and the bear took the most obvious course of action and simply walked through it.

In 2009 I was invited to be a resident artist on a small island off the west coast of Ireland. The requirements were straightforward: to make work in response to the island. It had taken a while to decide what to do and making such decisions before ever visiting the island was problematic. I decided on another sculpture from tent technology which measured 3 meters x 15 meters x 20 meters. The drawings for such a work had been on the  table for a while and at first it was not a consideration. Then I read on the islands website the craziest thing – If it was not for the curvature of the Earth one would be able to see America from here. – or words to that affect. I knew what I had to do and set about realizing that sculpture. My reason for doing so was to interrupt this interrupted view. But more came about than expected. The work, for a period of a week changed the island’s position above sea level by 3 meters. The weather made the task of erecting and maintain the work during this period a battle. The elements finally won, destroying the work and lending it a sense of the ill-fated expedition. I managed to get the thing into a near perfect form for 1 day. this was the day I photographed it and is the image attached to this post.

In both cases the exciting thing is incorporating these histories into the works future manifestations.

But back to the arrival of my new book. As I said earlier, the timing of it’s arrival is perfect as my next venture concerns finding a very small desolate unpopulated island of no more than 200 square meters on which to make a new work.

Fingers crossed.