Artist in Dissidence

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

Science, The Smithsonian, Tony Cohn, Art19, African American History And Culture, Exhibit, Dc, Exhibits, Pop Culture, Zoo, National Museum, National Zoo, Natural History, Air And Space, Smithsonian, Postal Museum, History Of The World, History, Sidedoor, Museum, Washington, Society & Culture, American History

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2017

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An artist steps in front of a camera and drops a priceless 2000-year-old vase onto the floor, smashing it into a million pieces. This is Ai Weiwei, and the resulting photographs are one of his most well-known works of art. Many were inspired; others were enraged. And around the world it got people talking. In this episode, we explore Ai Weiwei’s controversial career, and how he uses art to rally against political and social injustice.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from a Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:14.0	I'm Tony Cohen.
0:19.0	Time travel with me for a second to 1995.
0:22.0	We're in Beijing. An artist walks out of his mother's house holding a large
0:26.3	rounded ceramic vase. It's priceless. It's more than 2,000 years old. It survived earthquakes, fires, even the rise and fall of dynasties.
0:36.4	Its value to Chinese culture can't be measured. The artist turns towards the camera,
0:41.7	stares it down, and as the shutter snaps he lets the vase slip
0:46.4	between his fingers, and it smashes onto a brick floor.
0:55.9	The vase drop is shown in triptych. That's three photos shown in panels next to each other.
0:58.8	The first image is pre-drop, the second mid-drop,
1:02.4	and the last shards are everywhere.
1:06.6	The artist's expression doesn't change from photo to photo.
1:10.3	For dropping a really historic object, his face is impassive.
1:13.4	He doesn't seem mad and he certainly doesn't seem apologetic.
1:16.8	The resulting artwork titled appropriately,
1:19.6	Dropping of a Han Dynasty Earn,, 1995 reflects his face.
1:25.1	It's almost aggressively bland.
1:27.5	It makes a statement with its non-statement.
1:31.2	For some, this was a necessary provocative act, a reference to the way that Communist China
1:36.6	controlled and erased dynastic history.
1:40.7	For others, this brazen destruction of an artifact was highly controversial.
1:45.0	Okay, so who is this guy?
	...

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