The Great Porn Protest of Ai Weiwei's Internet Fans
A few years ago, while I was on a computer in Beijing, examining the photographs of a contemporary photographer who turns Qing dynasty portraits "into tasteful nudes the police showed up.
A few years ago, while I was on a computer in Beijing, examining the photographs of a contemporary photographer who turns Qing dynasty portraits into tasteful nudes, the police showed up. Jing Jing and Cha Cha (jingcha means "police") are China's leading Internet police, animated characters who amble onto your computer screen when you stumble upon something that you're not supposed to be looking at. They had a message for me: no pornography. There was, as usual, no "complaint" button, no way of writing back to Big Brother to say he was wrong this time, that this wasn't pornography at all.
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But that's what Ai Weiwei's fans are starting to do on a blogspot called awwfannude, after the artist the government loves to hate was accused of spreading pornography with an innocent nude portrait (see below). The accusation would be laughable — so much contemporary Chinese art, including Weiwei's past oeuvre, includes nudes – if it didn't come on the heels of the fake tax evasion charges that landed him in jail, at the hands of a government hoping to stop him from provoking Chinese people to think more critically about brutality, human rights and corruption. That's practically impossible at this point, given how determined he is to talk (he just rebooted his Twitter account, after being told to give it up) and how dedicated and legion Ai Weiwei's fans are.So dedicated that they've begun taking photos of themselves naked, under the banner "nudity is not pornography." It's a beautiful kind of protest, not least because it's so rare to see people taking their clothes off publicly in China, especially for political and artistic reasons. That's not to say these images are always beautiful to look at.
At the center of the whole controversy is a photo also featuring fans. Last year, a handful of female fans had come to visit Ai at his studio; he merrily suggested a nude portrait, they agreed, and Zhao Zhao, Ai's assistant, took the photo. "Everybody agreed so we did it and they were put on the Internet, and that's it, we forget about it," he said. When he was arrested earlier this year, police quizzed him about the image. "If they see nudity as pornography," he told Associated Press, "then China is still in the Qing dynasty."
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At the center of the whole controversy is a photo also featuring fans. Last year, a handful of female fans had come to visit Ai at his studio; he merrily suggested a nude portrait, they agreed, and Zhao Zhao, Ai's assistant, took the photo. "Everybody agreed so we did it and they were put on the Internet, and that's it, we forget about it," he said. When he was arrested earlier this year, police quizzed him about the image. "If they see nudity as pornography," he told Associated Press, "then China is still in the Qing dynasty."