Ai Wei Wei the ZEN Master

Ai Wei Wei Garish Painting Ancient Neolithic Pottery

Chinese Hold Ai Wei Wei’s Passport, 

Denies Access to Art Opening at the Hirshhorn in DC

October 7, 2012

With his government holding his passport, the political activist/artist will be absent from his new show at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum, where controversy is the main attraction.

But then, in one of his classic moves, he turned the tables on his persecutors: It could be, he said, that the notable absence of an artist from his own opening would have a bigger impact than his presence there ever could. That absence could underscore the daily indignities imposed by a Chinese state that is trying to forge “a new national identity based in culture and humanity,” Ai said, but whose soft-power actions mask an unchanged hard line. “I still think it's very old, cold-war thinking … I think that the thing they are afraid of most is freedom of speech—the spirit of freedom of speech is the number one enemy for a totalitarian society.”

Soft power is a "floating sign" masking hard power

And this is what Christopher Nolan did with the character of The Joker performed by the irreplaceable Heath Ledger in his The Dark Knight Rises

as observed by Darren at:

http://www.thm0vieblog.com  

in Dublin

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