The project is almost exactly what it sounds like: a hundred million life-size porcelain sunflower seeds—each hand-molded, fired, and painted by a crew of ceramicists in Jingdezhen, China’s most famous pottery town. The project has been an open secret in Ai’s circle for months, but this is the first time that all hundred million seeds are being shown in public. It is a vast sea of gray seeds that weighs a hundred and fifty tons, and visitors are encouraged to walk through and toy with them. (What if people steal them? The Guardian asks, and Ai gives an elliptical answer.)

I saw the seeds in progress for the first time about seven months ago at Ai’s studio in Beijing, when I was writing a Profile of him for the magazine. Ai led me into a room about the size of a squash court, and, without explanation, we climbed out onto a rippling, crunching mass of objects that looked, at first glance, like ordinary seeds. I crouched down and ran my hands through the cool mass beneath my feet. The seeds are heavier than expected; each one is both naturalistic and ornate. Chinese people munch on sunflower seats all day but these are as inedible, Adrian Searle points out, as the marble sugar cubes produced by Duchamp, Ai’s icon. “It is like an ocean, right?” Ai said, as we crouched on them. There were fifteen million so far, he said, swiveling around to examine them. “This is less than the population of Beijing. It’s strange to look at it, but in total it will be almost ten times more than this.”

As a finished product, this piece has some obvious resonance to Ai’s other obsessions these days. Ai has been intensely focused on Twitter, sending his rants and declarations and appeals to thirty-six thousand Chinese readers who are—Who are they, actually? And where are they? Beijing? The hinterlands? Who knows? Whoever they are, they have never met in person but are united by a belief in an idea strong enough to keep them reading, despite the fact that Twitter is banned and can only be accessed through some technical gymnastics. Ai is also obsessed with other sets of numbers: the more than five thousand children who died in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008—in part because of faulty school construction—as well as the thirty to forty-five million people who died during the famine following the Great Leap Forward. Never have sunflower seeds been this political.

But the Guardian is reporting today that the exhibit has been closed:

The installation was closed all day and one visitor, who preferred not to be named, said she had been told it was for health and safety reasons because of the ceramic dust the tiny porcelain seeds were creating.

A Tate spokeswoman initially said it had been closed for maintenance rather than health and safety reasons. So many people had walked through it that it simply needed “putting back into shape,” she said.

But at 5.30pm the picture became less clear when she said the installation would not be reopening this evening and a statement would be issued some time later.

See also a review of the exhibit from The Guardian. And from The Independent:

The stripy husk shapes are a grey mass – you can crunchily stomp across them – and they appear uniform and featureless until one picks one up and looks at it closely.

Is this about the way we look at China? Do we see a label that says “Made in China” and inwardly shrug at the thought of millions of faceless factory workers? Or about Chinese- government censorship, so much in the news following the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo? Do we see those oppressed or killed under the regime of Chairman Mao, cut off before they could grow, or a city full of immensely skilled crafts-people, whose skills are no longer needed in mass-industrialised China? All this, yes, and more.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, contemporary art, School Collapse
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The collapse of school buildings in the 6.9 magnitude quake was responsible for 35 percent of the student deaths, Xinhua news agency said in a report late Thursday, quoting a Qinghai province education bureau official.

The overall toll climbed to 2,187, with another 80 people still missing, it reported. More than 1,400 of those injured were in serious condition.

The quake struck April 14 in a remote Tibetan region of Qinghai.

The schools issue is extremely sensitive after thousands of children died in a huge May 2008 earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan as school buildings collapsed while neighbouring structures stood firm.The collapse of school buildings in the 6.9 magnitude quake was responsible for 35 percent of the student deaths, Xinhua news agency said in a report late Thursday, quoting a Qinghai province education bureau official.

Activists have been trying for two years to get a full public accounting of the children who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

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China has ordered the halt of public entertainment tomorrow as it holds a day of mourning for the 2,000 victims of last week’s earthquake in western Qinghai province. Flags will fly at half-mast in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, theatre and sporting performances are cancelled, karaoke bars shut and the culture ministry has ordered suspension of all online music, games, comics, films and TV shows.

The nationwide commemoration was announced as hail and snow hit the high-altitude Qinghai region, hampering relief efforts, after a mass prayer for victims in Gyegu near the centre of the quake in the predominantly Tibetan Yushu county yesterday was battered by sandstorms, above. State media reported several aid lorries had overturned on the icy mountain road running 600 miles from the provincial capital of Xining. Officials reported the death toll had risen to 2,064, with more than 12,000 injured and 175 still missing. China says the quake was 7.1 magnitude.

Danwei has translated the official notice for the Day of Mourning from the Ministry of Culture.

Meanwhile, concerns remain over the safety of schools, as many crumbled in the quake, despite a government pledge to inspect and shore up school buildings nationwide in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. From AP:

The government last year launched a vast project to inspect and strengthen schools across the country, and about 70,000 of them need work to be made quake-proof, a top education official indicated last month.

But some people, including students who survived last week’s quake in Yushu county, have angrily asked why schools in the remote Tibetan community hadn’t been fixed already. The quake’s overall death toll rose to 2,064 Tuesday.

“If every year half the money spent on cars, eating, drinking and traveling overseas were saved and spent on strengthening rural buildings, in a single year the buildings of millions of people could be made more earthquake-proof,” a former top engineer for the China Earthquake Administration, Wang Zifa, wrote on his blog Saturday in a dig at officials’ spending.

His post made a point of saying “especially schools.”

Update: Sydney Morning Herald has an update on the day of mourning:

The front pages of Chinese newspapers were bathed in black and the nation’s flag lowered to half-mast around the country Wednesday as China began a day of mourning for its quake victims.

Flags were also to be lowered at Chinese embassies and consulates worldwide as the government remembered victims of the 6.9 magnitude earthquake in northwestern China a week ago that left at least 2,064 people dead.

Qinghai held a province-wide three minutes of silence at 10:00 am (0200 GMT). Chinese President Hu Jintao also paid silent tribute to victims of the quake, the official Xinhua news agency said.

See also “Netizens Criticize Earthquake News for not Covering the Disaster” from China in Transition.

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After many school dormitories collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake, how come the Yushu prefecture didn’t take any notice? Don’t you know that Yushu is on the seismic belt? The school dormitories were not renovated-isn’t it possible to reconstruct? Apart from natural disasters, where is the responsibility of the related persons? What lessons can we learn from this experience? How is it that in the Prefecture headquarters area all the people’s houses are of such poor quality that they have broken like eggs? If these houses that could not withstand earthquakes are built privately, then shouldn’t the government issue some advice or policy regarding this? Likewise, in Yushu, why is it that in the aftermath of the earthquake, there is such a big difference to be seen between the people’s houses and government offices? Why is it that during a 7.1 Richter scale earthquake, the first was shown to be so poor and the second was so strong?

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On Twitter, Ai Weiwei said today that he returned to the Xi’an Road police station in Chengdu, together with lawyer Xia Lin, Professor Ai Xiaoming, and three documentary filmmakers to file a report about the beating. He spent four hours filling out forms. The police brought one video camera and Ai’s crew had four, so the two sides videotaped each other throughout the process.

The video below has English subtitles. Thanks to Diane Gatterdam for providing the links.

Update: ChinaGeeks summarizes the key moments of the film, and gives an update on Ai’s recent activities, here.

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As I watched coverage of the NPC on Chinese television, and as I heard Premier Wen speaking in determined tones about the importance of supervision by public opinion, or yulun jiandu (????) – a term that encompasses the notion of power monitoring by the press and the public – I thought first of Tan Zuoren in his jail cell.

…Delegates to the NPC and CPPCC, if you have read the draft of Tan Zuoren’s research report, and if you have seen the documentaries made by Professor Ai Xiaoming (???) and others, then you will see beyond any shadow of a doubt that the problem of shoddy construction in the earthquake zone was very real.

You will also no doubt recall that on May 16, just days after the quake, People’s Daily Online invited officials from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Housing to speak with Internet users, and these officials said that “if indeed shoddy construction was a factor in school collapses, this will be strictly investigated and handled with zero tolerance.”

More than one year later, the official in charge of Sichuan’s provincial housing authority maintains that “there were no cases of collapse in the earthquake attributable to construction quality issues.”

Over the issue of school collapses in the Sichuan quake, the people have been denied the right to monitor the government, to criticize the government. The parents of the students who were lost are left with nothing but there own grief. And an intellectual who plead for the most basic justice for the people has been locked away.

What are Tan Zuoren’s crimes? He loves his nation. He loves his home. He cares for the facts. He speaks with principle. It is just as Professor Cui Weiping has said: “This kind of person is the backbone of our people . . . the foundation stone for the rebuilding of our moral fiber and conscience, and the starting point for the rebuilding of our spirit. To hold such a man prisoner is to imprison the conscience of our people!”

Read more about Tan Zuoren via CDT.

Also related, artist/activist Ai Weiwei and others sent open letters to all the delegates to this year’s NPC meetings calling for transparency in the handling of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Global Times reports:

This letter says that last year the so-called “citizen investigators” had sent 113 letters to government departments at all levels, requesting the disclosure of information. But “none of the departments directly answered a single question raised by us,” the new letter said.

Eighty-four departments responded to last year’s “citizens’ investigation.” But all of them said the group should look for the information online, refusing to offer any other details, saying it concerns state or business secrets. Tuesday’s letter said the other 27 departments did not respond to last year’s letters, violating the regulations on the disclosure of government information, which require them to reply within seven business days.

…Ai and some volunteers also posted the letter on a popular social micro-blog run by Sina.com Wednesday morning. But the accounts containing extracts of the letter were suspended, and more than 70 accounts containing the char-acters Ai or Wei were “killed” by the webmaster Wednesday, Ai told the Global Times.

A customer service employee at Sina.com said the reason for the suspension is the posts in those accounts contain sensitive material.

Read more about the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the collapse of schools, via CDT.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, NPC 2010, School Collapse, Tan Zuoren, transparency
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Attorney Pu Zhiqiang said activist Tan Zuoren was convicted of the charge Tuesday by the Chengdu Intermediate Court. Tan’s trial in August had concluded with no ruling, while police detained and threatened the man’s supporters.

Tan’s supporters say they believe the authorities were trying to silence him for his investigation into the collapse of schools in the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck in Sichuan province in May 2008, leaving almost 90,000 dead or missing. Tan estimated at least 5,600 students were among the dead.

The charge of inciting subversion of state power is believed linked to his quake investigation as well as essays he wrote about the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square that ended in a deadly military crackdown. Beijing routinely uses such broad and vaguely defined accusations to imprison dissidents, sometimes for years.

Pu said Tan would appeal the court’s decision.

See also a Reuters report. ChinaGeeks has translated selected tweets about the verdict.

Update: The BBC has posted a profile of Tan.

Please click here to read the Chinese text of “1989: Testifying to the Final Beauty,” written by Tan Zuoren. This text was used as criminal evidence against him by Chinese government.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, pu zhiqiang, School Collapse, Tan Zuoren
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The documentary follows several groups of parents as their grief turned into protest.

“It was tofu construction,” said one interviewee, while another held up a brick to show how easy it was to brush off the “mortar” on one side.

The 40-minute film shows how the parents are stonewalled and ignored by Communist party officials.

It was blocked from being aired in China, and the words “unnatural disaster” have been censored from the Chinese internet.

When the film garnered its Oscar nomination, Chinese media outlets either removed the film from their reports, or omitted the entire category.

China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province:

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Read more about Ai Weiwei and The Numbers project he is spearheading, via CDT.

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In late August 2008, following the 100th day of the Sichuan Earthquake, rescue teams began to withdraw and the media ceased to report on the disasters at the schools. Chengdu environmentalist Tan Zuoren and local volunteers were still rushing from one collapsed school to the next, trying to find out why they had collapsed. Autumn went and winter came, Tan Zuoren and Xie Yihui had visited ten counties and cities and over eighty towns and townships in the main disaster region, covering a distance of about 3,000km. They managed to release an investigate report on the internet before the 1st anniversary of the May 12 Earthquake. This is the first investigative report conducted by independent citizens on the collapsed schools.

An Investigation by Citizens from SC King on Vimeo.

More information about the video is here.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Ai Xiaoming, School Collapse, Tan Zuoren
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