china censors ai weiwei

‘mock up, beijing’ by herzog & de meuron and ai weiwei for italian pavillion at venice biennale 2008 image © designboom

renowned chinese artist ai weiwei‘s activism has finally provoked the chinese authorities to act against him. his studio is being staked out by plain clothes police and last month the artist’s popular blog on sina.com was deleted, as well as his commentaries on china’s version of twitter.

ai weiwei has been running a campaign documenting the death of school children in the sichuan earthquake of may 2008, alleging that the number of fatalities was due to local officials siphoning money from school building costs.

‘mock up, beijing’ by herzog & de meuron and ai weiwei for italian pavillion at venice biennale 2008 image © designboom

the artist has launched another blog (blog.aiweiwei.com), and will republish his investigations into the sichuan disaster on this. ‘I don’t know how long it will last before it is blocked,’ he said, ‘but the server is in the US, so the content will remain.’ no-one from sina.com would comment on the issue of the deletion of ai weiwei’s blog.

source: the art newspaper

featured here: jacques herzog, ai weiwei and pierre de meuron in front of their ‘bird’s nest’ photocredit: http://www.herzogdemeuron-film.com