Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Ai Weiwei’s house and studio complex FAKE Design is located in Beijing’s northeast Caochangdi district a semi-industrial area near the city’s fifth ring road and not far from Beijing Capital International Airport. The studio bustles with activity day and night while at its centre Ai’s nonchalant presence belies his radical thinking and incessant output. The constant stream of visitors to the studio includes musicians actors collectors curators architects academics fashion designers journalists and film crews many of whom are informally photographed by Ai and their images posted directly onto the internet part of his approach to making his life and art transparent. Before it was shut down by the Chinese authorities in May 2009 Ai had a popular blog on which he posted thousands of documentary images of his life alongside poignant social and political commentaries. He now avidly uses Twitter on which he currently has over fifty thousand followers to communicate his philosophical and political views. A number of assistants live within the studio compound in their own apartments while others arrive each day to work on various projects from Ai’s ongoing citizen’s investigation into the thousands of children who were killed in the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan Province on 12 May 2008 (a disaster compounded by the collapse of inadequately built schools) to preparations for myriad international exhibitions commissions and biennales. The studio has a cook vegetable garden chickens ducks and idle dogs not to mention the many ‘rescue’ cats. In fact cat welfare is the subject of the Studio’s most recent hard-hitting documentary distributed via the internet. San Hua which reveals the cruelty of the Chinese cat-trafficking trade. Ai’s other larger studios are located further outside the city and accommodate skilled craftsmen who produce his ‘dysfunctional’ sculptures using ancient Chinese fumiture and complex temple-wood structures. Ai also has his own kiln and a dedicated team in Jingdezhen the ‘porcelain city’ in southern China’s Jiangxi Province producing his varied ceramic works and continually experimenting with new ceramic forms. (LL)