#not people who look at me like a celebrity who they can critisize like theyre leaving a review on rotten tomatoes

[maaaxx]

dont get me wrong i am more excited for this atla remake and the inevitable renaissance part 2 than i have ever been for anything in my life. however im also terrified of what changes this is going to bring to the fandom. Obviously the 2020 renaissance brought a lot of new and good things (zukka, a ton of amazing fics, etc). But more people joining the fandom means new people joining ao3 and interacting with fics and authors and artists too. Even in the few years that i've been active in fandom i've noticed a dramatic shift in how people interact with artists and authors especially. And I can't see this not getting worse as more people whose main social media experiences include tik tok and instagram coming to ao3 and tumblr. Like these people are used to content creators who revolve their content around what their audience wants because its their job, and I know this isnt going to translate well to the culture around ao3 writers especially when unconsolidated comments and 'advise' is already a problem for a ton of authors. And for people who dont understand that fics and fanart are supposed be transactional in the sense that you need to leave comments and kudos and reblog stuff when they're used to simply liking something *maybe* being enough. Idk whats going on with other fandoms, but I do know that these things have been an ongoing issue for the atla fandom and like I said, I can't imagine having another 'renaissance' and this stuff not getting worse.

[slowpainting]

Ai Wei Wei

Ai Wei Wei is a chinese and global artist creating politically motivated works. he is a thinker, an anti establishment artist exploring and exposing the realitites of living in china, and the schism between the east and the west. Being around New york in the 80s, much of his work takes inspiration from artists like Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and especialy Marcel Duchamp. What I think He gets from Duchamp is the concept of it not being about the making of an object but about the idea. the repurposing of an image, of whats preixisting. the urn, already lived, he is giving a new context to in order to turn it into his own art piece He is distancing himself from the physical act of making to create something, to focus more on concepts and ideas.

The Hann Urn

This piece, The Hann Urn, we see a tryptic through which the artists drops a 2000 year old urn, the final image depicting it shattered on the ground. throughout all three images, the artist remains deapan, looking at the camera.

A tryptic is typically is related to biblical imagery, for example with christ on the cross and then two panels adjacent, telling a religious story. Ai is appropriating this format in this piece, but when his content is related to destroying a cultural past, this becomes an act of revolution and rejection. this could be a very aggravating act and caused a lot of critisism,  but what Ai Wei Wei could be trying to convey is the idea that we can only forge a new modern sense of our own culture if we disavow the past. By breaking that urn and Ai is opening up a pathway to the future. all through this agressive act of violence and destruction. so in a sense its an act of creation and destruction all at once.

In his “Study of Perspective” series, Ai Weiwei points his middle finger at iconic landmarks, such as the White House, the Mona Lisa, and the Reichstag in Berlin. this could be a way to share his views on power and authority, as somone who constantly speaks out about oppression., in a humerous satirical way. what Ai does seems normal in America, or the west, where freedom of speech is celebrated, but compare this to China, to a very volitile place to be politicly active. iA place where f you’re not part of the system or outwardly celebrate the system, you will be silenced. In 2011 Ai Wei Wei was arrested and imprisoned for 81 days.

Name List Investigation

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake struck Sichuan, China. Over 5,000 students in primary and secondary schools died in the earthquake, as a result of poor architecture. The government silenced these deaths. Ai WEi Wei and his team found out the names of all the children that died, and released it. Though attempts to silence him on social media were made, he used twitter. what is this about? equality? democracy? transparency. its an ongoing search for the truth of knowledge, using twitter is his canvas. 

Ai also douments his conflicts with the Chinese Government, visualises through his art the surveillance he has been under his whole life. hes constantly documenting things as a way to speak out for the people. Theyre filming him. hes filming them filming him. it creates a sort of cat and mouse game.

Ai Wei Wei’s Sunflower Seeds 

This is my favourite work. An installation piece held at the Tate Modern in London. Ai’s installations are often immersive or unavoidable, showing his tendancy to try and enevolp the viewer in his concepts. In this work, he fills the main hall of the gallery with millions of sunflower seeds. He hired a lot of people, to hand cast and paint each sunflower seed, that filled the space. To me,  the scale of that, the idea of so many completely unique hand crafted objects filling this space, is amazing. The choice to use porcelin is an important one as it is synonymous with china. theres a juxtaposition between what you think you see, ordinary sunflower natural objects, disposable and uniform,  is not what you actually see, which are these manmade carefully made  pieces. they look mass produced but really were carefully handmade. is it a commentary of the idea of “made in china” phenonemena? On how Americans, ot the west in general outsource much of production to the east. This has connotations with cheap or mass produced items. its not thought of as being hand crafted and is not respected. Ai Wei Wei circumvents that, as the work, which has been outsourced to china has been lovingly crafted and painted by individuals.