MCLC: Ai Weiwei's Divine Comedy

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Ai Weiwei's Divine Comedy
***********************************************************

Source: Beijing Cream (6/21/13):
http://beijingcream.com/2013/06/saint-ai-the-musician-the-divine-comedy-rev
iewed/

Saint Ai, The Musician: The Divine Comedy, Reviewed
By Pete DeMola

Ai Weiwei has managed to upset and alienate many groups during his reign
as China’s national gadfly, particularly within the past five years, a
period in which the 55-year-old’s public profile has swelled to supernova
proportions. A respondent brought up the “Ai Weiwei Effect” in last
month’s roundup of critical reactions
<http://beijingcream.com/2013/05/how-is-ai-weiweis-musicality-we-asked-chin
ese-music-experts/> to Ai Weiwei and Zuoxiao Zuzhou’s song “Dumbass,” and
on the eve of the release of The Divine Comedy – the six-song album on
which Dumbass appears — it’s worth asking again: how do we perform
aesthetic analysis of the outspoken artist-cum-activist’s work when our
perceptions are so colored by sentiment?

Saint Ai, Patron Saint of the Persecuted

Ai’s celebrity status is self-perpetuating and now beyond his control.
Short of sealing himself off and banishing all visitors, journalists, and
collaborators from his studio while refusing to create and promote —
creating and promoting generally being what creative people do — I assume
he can’t control who writes about him, who gives him public shout-outs,
and how his art will be interpreted by a Western public that still views
China, at best, as a cypher, and at worst as a gray-colored dystopia rife
with baby-aborting drones and entire cities of enslaved assembly-line
workers.

The accusations of shameless headline-seeking behavior will always be
there, even as Ai just does what he’s always done. This is, after all, the
guy who co-organized an avant-garde exhibition packed with transgressive
content from dozens of domestic artists, including a piece by Zhu Yu
called “Eating People,” a depiction of simulated cannibalism that
continues to surface online a decade later as anti-Chinese propaganda. In
that one, Ai himself is famously depicted hurling an ancient vase to the
ground as a call to civic action. The piece was called “Fuck Off.”

We’re talking about the guy who worked with a Swiss design firm in
creating the modern-day symbol of an ascendant China, the Bird’s Nest,
only to later dismiss the Olympics entirely as a “fake smile” to the
world, and the guy who made it his mission to hold authorities responsible
for the shoddy construction that led to 5,200 dead schoolchildren after
the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He had his first major retrospective in North
America, According to What?, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC last
fall — it’s currently parked in Indianapolis — which has generated extra
press because Chinese authorities have forbidden him to attend.
Point is: Ai has always been controversial. His visibility, our
perceptions of celebrity, a buffoonish party-state, and the now-ubiquitous
presence of social media is the problem — not the man, and certainly not
how he chooses to express himself.

A large part of his visibility, ironically, may be due to the authorities’
revocation of his passport, a counterproductive measure that has forced
the artist to engage the public online through social media and
microblogging platforms that — as Tao noted last month after an impromptu
haircut <http://beijingcream.com/2013/05/i-got-a-haircut-from-ai-weiwei/>
became a public event that even the venerable James Fallows couldn’t
resist gushing about — reinforce the cult and farce of celebrity and lend
newsworthy status to even the most mundane activities.

Perhaps if the country’s knuckle-dragging simpletons didn’t engage in
their perennial goon-squad tactics — shuttering Ai’s blog, harassing and
arresting his assistants, administering cerebral hemorrhage, tearing down
his Shanghai studio, among other heavy-handed measures — then he wouldn’t
have settled so comfortably into his role as Saint Ai, the Romantic
Dissident. He wouldn’t be the guy you reflexively sneer at whenever he
presents another creative endeavor.
China has a way of alienating everyone, including itself.

Saint Ai, Patron Saint of Stinging Rebuke

Constant media presence comes with blowback. Domestic critics, artists,
writers, and others in the country’s creative community often decry the
Beijing-born son of a persecuted poet for his vacuum-like effect when it
comes to representing the mainland Chinese art scene to the rest of the
world; for artificially driving up prices, denying others their moment in
the sun, and unnecessarily baiting the authorities, which some say leads
to increased scrutiny on a community that is already viewed with suspicion.

The near-consensus among those in China’s expatriate community — or at
least the slice that’s plugged into English-language media — is that Ai is
a hack who relishes in concocting headline-grabbing PR stunts with
questionable artistic merit: whether it’s viral video spoofs, magazine
covers, or wry photographs, Ai can do no right. Even the sheer mention of
his name by visiting public figures results in withering public scorn.

These people, who endlessly criticize without creating anything of value
themselves, also lambaste him for his role as the international media’s
go-to guy for quotes on Chinese current events, a gilded position that
many argue oversimplifies the complex problems the country faces and feeds
lazy Western journalists a distorted narrative of modern China.

And the authorities, lest we forget, remain uncomfortable with Ai’s
post-Olympic role as an international celebrity activist calling for the
state to rectify its human rights abuses. They continue to assail him with
a gauntlet of questionable legal challenges, from accusations of economic
malfeasance to crimes against morality, and hold his passport. Ai’s not
technically under house arrest, but usually he’s not given much reason to
leave his Caochangdi compound.
Saint Ai, the Musician

Zuoxiao Zuzhou has impeccable credentials
<http://www.rockinchina.com/w/Zuoxiao_Zuzhou> in the country’s music scene
— he’s a well-respected founding father who helped popularize avant-garde
rock music in the early-1990s with his band No — so it’s somewhat a
musical coup for Ai’s team that Zuoxiao would agree to produce and write
the music for The Divine Comedy.

But after listening to the record several times, I still wonder what Ai’s
and Zuoxiao’s goals were. If it’s just two friends working together to
explore a new creative medium, then we have a success. As a platform for
catharsis, working through grueling psychological issues from detention,
it’s pretty good. And as a vessel from which to reach a new audience —
say, Zuoxiao fans who don’t care about politics — it also works, and I
hope that some of Ai’s starpower will rub off on the country’s rock scene
and lead to positive developments for everyone involved.

But if Ai intended The Divine Comedy to be a groundbreaking musical
statement that rivals what the country’s all-star musical talent has been
doing for the past decade, then… maybe not. Domestic acts like Duck Fight
Goose, Hedgehog, Carsick Cars, and PK-14 — four rock bands I consider to
be the country’s most durable and influential — have him easily beat.

And guess what? That’s okay. I don’t think this record is an attempt to
steer national discussion. “Each song is a different take of Ai’s newfound
channel for expression through music,” the press release for The Divine
Comedy helpfully states, before explaining that the album’s songs fall
into three categories: commentaries on current events, documentations of
real dialogues, and personal reflections. Aside from a modest two-sentence
bio (“Ai Weiwei is an artist and his work encompasses diverse fields
including fine art, curating, architecture, design and social criticism.
He is a fierce defender of freedom of expression and is always seeking new
ways to communicate with the public”) and logistical information as to
where to purchase the record — his website <http://aiweiwei.com/>, iTunes,
and all major online music retailers, in case you’re interested — there’s
nothing else.

No weighty proclamations or celebrity endorsements or saucy pull quotes or
a multipage hagiography or multimedia ad campaigns, but rather a standard,
even minimalist press release announcing to the world that Saint Ai the
Creator has given birth to another new artistic thing.

Many domestic pop culture critics will undoubtedly feel frustrated that
this record will be the most covered rock music to come out of mainland
China this year. While that may be true, it’s predicated on a logical
fallacy: Ai can’t be blamed that this country’s independent record labels
— the companies who have the economic resources and cultural influence to
disseminate this music to Western audiences — tend to be mismanaged,
short-sighted, and engage in virtually zero international outreach.

And while the country has no shortage of dedicated participants involved
in the music biz — musicians, promoters, writers, venue managers,
bloggers, DIY labels, retailers, graphic designers, and other starry-eyed
idealists — the overwhelming majority of them don’t have the resources to
promote this bubbling cauldron of creativity outside of the country, which
is where you need to focus your attention if you want any influential
press coverage that’ll generate sustained international interest in your
band of choice.

Maybe Ai can help with that.

The record’s opening track, “Just Climb the Wall,” was surprising: I
didn’t expect to hear that distinctive spoken-word snarl overlaid upon a
swirling, swing-influenced stomp with bold, declarative piano tones
clashing in the background like ivory thunderclaps, equal parts Nick Cave
and lonesome urban cowboy.

While the follow-up, “Chaoyang Park,” sounds somewhat dated — those
distorted guitar power chords ascending into a dissonant cloud-fuzz have
been rendered perhaps a bit too close to Nine Inch Nails’s Broken for
critical comfort — it does provide a suitably disorienting environment for
the harsh subject matter that lyrically constitutes much of the record:

Are you still following me? I won’t do it anymore
Tell me, what’s your name? Beat me and I won’t tell
Give my cell phone back. Delete those pictures now
I have a wife and a child too. I can’t remember their phone numbers.

I think it’s easy to forget in the wake of Ai’s well-publicized brushes
with the law that most musicians in this country shy away from weighty
subject matter in their songs — even those in this country’s punk rock
scene are guilty of utilizing formulaic flag-waving lyrical bullshit
because they’re unwilling to wrap their liberty-spiked heads around
anything specific — so it’s nice to hear an outsider not only mentioning
the elephant in the room, but tackling it and wrestling it to the ground
and trying to yank out its tusks.

And while the muddy, churning mid-tempo sediment of “Laoma Tihua” — a song
that appears to recall Ai’s ill-fated trip to Chengdu to attend Tan
Zuoren’s trial — was initially a sleeper, repeated listens dredge more
interesting stuff up to the surface — nuanced flourishes, like silverfish
darting between the reeds as ghouls shriek overhead — and drag it
downstream before the current quickly corrects itself with “Hotel USA,”
the closest thing on the record to a veritable road banger, a hypnotic
effort laced with smoky harmonica curls and druggy campfire chanting.

This song, the first of two arranged by guitarist Zhang Zhe, flows
effortlessly, perhaps to a fault, into “Give Tomorrow Back to Me,” an
autopiloted ballad that eventually reaches liftoff when Zuoxiao steps in
to handle the chorus: this interwoven forlorn crooning cradled in
accordion whorls, guitar fills and the almost perceptible swirls of
marijuana smoke makes it a contender for one of the best domestic rock
songs that I’ve heard this year.

So despite those minor flaws — namely the sequencing, the unsteady pace
and the juvenile lyrical content of “Dumbass,” which leaves the listener
with a metallic taste in the mouth (which could have been Ai’s intention)
– The Divine Comedy never sounds self-indulgent or narcissistic: it’s
surprisingly muted and tightly controlled. Perhaps Ai Weiwei and Zuoxiao
Zuzhou accomplished exactly what they wanted, whatever that may have been.

The Divine Comedy will be available tomorrow, the two-year anniversary of
Ai Weiwei’s release from detention. Pete DeMola is a writer and creative
consultant in Hong Kong. He tweets @pmdemola
<https://twitter.com/pmdemola>.