BLUE JOURNEYS: AI WEIWEI CALLS TO HUMANITY

AI WEIWEI

A little blue book has important messages for the inhabitants of the “Pale Blue Dot” known as planet Earth.  “We are all refugees somehow, somewhere, and at some moment."

“Humanity,” a new book by Ai Weiwei and Larry Warsh, is a collection of writings on human life and the refugee crisis, published by Princeton University Press.

For Ai Weiwei, considered by many to be the most important political artist of our time, the plight of refugees is quite personal. In 1957, he was born to refugee parents -- his father was the revered poet Ai Qing. When Ai Weiwei was just 1 year old, Ai Qing was named an enemy of the people and the whole family was sent to hard labor camp in the Gobi Desert in remote northwest China, where they remained for 16 years.

Selected from numerous articles, interviews, and conversations, Ai Weiwei shares his ideas about humanity and mass migration. His words speak to the profound urgency of the global refugee crisis, the resilience and vulnerability of the human condition, and the role of art in providing a voice for the voiceless.

"I don't care what all people think. My work belongs to the people who have no voice," Ai Weiwei tells us.

The color blue is a significant choice for the book’s cover. It represents both freedom, as it is the color of the boundless sky, and of challenge, as it is the color of the oceans that many refugees must cross in hopes of finding their own freedom and securing new homes.  

According to recent UN accounts, there are now more refugees worldwide than at any time since World War II -- over 65 million people are now displaced. Escalating political aggression, war, and violence are the primary drivers. Climate change will push even more people out of their homes. Yet despite these epic statistics, most people in the world are either unaware or choose to look away. Ai Weiwei has been working passionately to help change the zeitgeist.

Weiwei enlightens us in his Op-Ed for The Guardian, “The refugee crisis isn’t about refugees. It’s about us.”

“The most difficult part is that the refugees desperately need some understanding. It’s not really that they need money. They need people to look at them and see them as human beings."

Political prisoners are another group of displaced people. The key difference is that they are prevented from leaving their countries. They are, in essence, refugees in situ. Ai Weiwei was taken as a political prisoner by the Chinese government, once in   and again in . His passport was taken and kept for 18 months. When he got it back, he was inspired to travel. When he visited Germany, he was moved by the sheer volume of new refugees who had come there, mainly via Greece -- 1.2 million people. He began to wonder about who they were, about their struggles and their stories.

Ai Weiwei traveled to Greece to learn more and to begin to document it all in “Human Flow,” a powerful new documentary film that brings us an intimate view of today’s refugee experience.

The film opens with a verse from Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet: “I want the right of life, of the leopard at the spring, of the seed splitting open — I want the right of the first man.” A white dove sailing diagonally across the blue ocean, as a white boat enters the screen. It is carrying way too many people, each wearing a neon orange life vest.

On the island of Lesbos, Ai Weiwei observed the flow in as many as 30 to 40 incoming boats per day, each crammed with men, women, children, and old people.

In all, Ai Weiwei traveled to 40 refugee camps in 23 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Bangladesh, Greece, France and more. He interviewed about 600 people and ended up with over 900 hours of footage.

As he talked with each person, he gained a new appreciation for their condition.

“Being a refugee is much more than a political status. It is the most pervasive kind of cruelty that can be exercised against a human being,” one refugee explains in the film. “You are forcibly robbing this human being of all aspects that would make human life not just tolerable but meaningful in many ways.”

Ai Weiwei points out, “Not a single refugee we met had willingly left their home, even when home was impoverished and undeveloped. The promise of economic prosperity is not more important than place. People left their homes because they were forced to by violence which caused the deaths of family members, relatives and fellow citizens. Often it is not just a single house that is destroyed, but entire villages vanish under indiscriminate bombing. There is simply no way for them to stay. Fleeing is the only choice they have to preserve their own lives and the lives of those they love.”

Refugees have no international rights. And to ever regain the chance to have a safe and stable life, they need a social integration program, job permits, and jobs. They need homes and food. The children need to go to school.

There is compelling reason care about refugees even beyond empathy. If children grow up without any hope, without any prospects for the future, they become very vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation, including radicalization.

“The nature of water is to flow,” Ai Weiwei muses. “Human nature too seeks freedom and that human desire is stronger than any natural force.” Beyond being driven by dark, evil forces, there are beautiful forces within refugee journeys.

“I want to show the refugees’ beauty,” Ai Weiwei say. “I want to show that even under the most difficult circumstances, the beauty is still there. The beautiful and the dark exist in the same picture.”

“How we look at other people often tells us about ourselves. It’s an honest reflection of the nature of human beings.”

Ai Weiwei believes that art has to be involved with the moral and philosophical and intellectual conversation. “If you call yourself an artist, this is your responsibility,” he says.

The refugee crisis is affecting us all, in one way or another. As we think about our own responses and our own roles, if we consider our shared humanity, we see new solutions.

“There are many borders to dismantle, but the most important are the ones within our own hearts and minds – these are the borders that are dividing humanity from itself,” Ai Weiwei explains.

Ai Weiwei has received many awards, including the 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International, the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. He’s now the Einstein visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.

See more of Ai Weiwei’s works in Ai Weiwei with the Wind.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: Image Still from Human Flow by Ai Weiwei Courtesy of Amazon Studios
2. Image: Still from “Human Flow,” by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
3. Image: Ai Weiwei with his new book, “Humanity” Courtesy of Ai Weiwei.Still from “Human Flow,” by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
4. Image: Still from “Human Flow,” by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
5. Image: Ai Weiwei and refugee tents in still from “Human Flow,” by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.by Reinhard H. “Emscherkunst Ai Weiwei Aus der Aufklärung. (End of Enlightenment),” installation by Ai Weiwei.
6. Image: Still from “Human Flow,” by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
7. Image: “Ai Weiwei on the Greek island of Lesbos.” Courtesy of Ai Weiwei.
8. Image: by Fridolin freudenfett. “Der chinesische Künstler Ai Weiwei will mit der Kunstinstallation an das Schicksal der vielen Flüchtlinge erinnern, die auf ihrem Weg nach Europa ertrunken sind.”
9. Photo: by Jan Stürmann/FOR-SITE Foundation. Art installation, “Ai Weiwei: With Wind.”
10. Image: “F Lotus” installation, by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of  Ai Weiwei.
11. Image: by eosmaia "Stools," by Ai Weiwei.
12. Image: Still from “Human Flow,” by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
13. Image: by Loz Pycock. “Sunflower Seeds,” by Ai Weiwei. Tate Modern Turbine Hall.
14. Photo: by Jan Stürmann/FOR-SITE Foundation. Ai Weiwei: With Wind.