Beyond the Power Rift: Impact of Ai Weiwei’s Hypermediatisaiton

Ai Weiwei, so-called the most influential artist from China, is the rebellious son of the famous Chinese modernist poet Ai Qing. However, treated as an enemy who committed treason, Ai’s footage, exhibition, and speech are banned in China, and his existence is erased from every corner of the Chinese Internet under the almighty censorship. Why would an artist “suffer” so much suppression from his home country but encounter iconic attention worldwide? Art historians Benoit Dillet and Tara Puri adopt the term “Hypermediatisation” to portray Ai Weiwei’s extraordinary reception in global politics and the art world in relation to the influence of international media, which partially explains the cause of his fame and infame. Mediatisation, according to Andreas Hepp, is a theorization of the influence of mass media in socio-culture. It also refers to adapting an individual or institution’s communication style for greater impact on mass media. Understanding the rationale and impact of Ai’s hypermediatisation enables us to further evaluate his artistic exploration and progression in a fair and novel way. This present study attempts to give a thorough synthesis of Ai Weiwei’s hypermediatisation in the context of contemporary art and analyses the significance and synergy between his political belief and artworks.  

First, hypermediatisation forges Ai Weiwei’s work the representational embodiment of contemporary art. For Dillet and Puri, the epidemic media attention Ai’s won is the paramount foundation that centralizes “techno-aesthetic,” the kernel of contemporary art. It is identified that the role of contemporary art is to be able to inspect and analyze the “technicity” in life that comprises the present social ambiance. To specify, contemporary art has to embrace mediatisation eventually to adapt to the audience’s hypermediatised life; it echoes and criticizes the “broadcasting” life and exploding information(71). In this view, we should consider to include Ai’s provocative public disclosures, including his previous blog(which failed to establish further because of China’s censorship), Twitter feed, and media interviews.  

It is acknowledged that Ai values all of his open expressions as a crucial part of his art(the Creator’s Project). Ai’s most famous voluntary project, Citizen Investigation(2009), unveils students’ names and family profiles that disappeared from the government’s victim list. The project accuses the Chinese government’s inhumane action of information control, which attempted to cover up the alleged corruption scandal against the local government and construction companies. Since Szechuan Earthquake(2008) struck three months before the Beijing Olympics, Ai was infuriated that Chinese media tried to disengage public attention from this sporting mega-event(Hu). A few months before announcing the project launching from his blog, he started to post his agitated opinion and complaint against the Chinese government’s bureaucracy on 22 May 2008. The common characteristic of Ai’s blogs is his sardonic yet splendid literariness in the style of writing, which grasps the key to media transmission. Soon, his speech went viral on Sina(like Chinese Twitter). For instance, in the entry Does the Nation have a list?(translated from Mandarin, 28 July 2008), he satirized stingingly the pretentiousness of government’s decision, “A dessert course of covering errors and singing praises will follow this feast of a disaster.” (Ai Weiwei’s blog archive) 

Besides, Ai’s performative actions documented by photography is worth noticing while tracing his contemporaneity under the effect of hypermediatisation. Art critic Boris Groys defines another dominant feature of contemporary art as “self-documentation.” He points out that any “politically motivated” art practices that comprise the “art” themselves, not as an outcome of a “creative activity,” have to be documented in order to present. Consequently, since it is precluded that these artistic practices aim to “produce an objectified artwork,” there are no other ways to represent them except self-documentation(Groys, 54). One example to delve into is Ai’s photographic series Study of Perspective (1995-2011)(see fig.1): with identical hand gesture— saluting towards worldwide institutions and monuments with his middle finger defocused in the image, Ai subverted the solemness and historical value of these landmarks, and indicated his “anarchist” ideology against institutional ruling and suppression on people’s freedom from various fields. Although the lighting and color are inconsistent since it is conducted a mixture of monochrome and color images, Ai succeeded in connecting each individual piece by the replicated composition and fixed perspective, placing the viewer’s gaze a little above his stretched left arm. It is evident that Ai intends to present his disdain through this continuous action rather than produce finely taken photos. The appalling effect of this project heated his exposure on global media.  

Second, hypermediatisation bestows Ai with unprecedented fame and international influence, which united the entire art world and institutions outside China to protest his detention(Hu,19). However, it also undermines the (political) clout of Ai’s provocative art pieces. It is fair to claim that Ai Weiwei has been acting in high-profile, subversively attacking and despising the Chinese government as well as Communist Party through straightforward yet radical visual language. His several images taken in Tiananmen Square and the front gate(see fig.2, fig.3 and fig.4)are quite blatant—skirt lifting and exposure of his wife’s underwear, untied shirt with the word “FUCK” on his chest, and middle finger raised to Mao’s portrait. Although he didn’t establish an evident thread or a unified style in respect of the formal quality of these images, except the reoccurrence of the identical scene with political significance, Ai’s self-explanatory oeuvre aroused extensive worldwide attention and investigations.  

Again, Ai’s figure as a maverick dissident was erected solidly supported by online dissemination, namely, his blog posts and western media. Nevertheless, the cynicism and avantgarde elitism of his hypermediatisation incite many critiques arguing that Ai is deploying politics, equal to instrumentalization, to publicize his art, because staying politically controversial is the key to attracting worldwide attention, rather than getting published as a trivial report which always is overlooked. These seeming conspiracy voices questioned Ai’s dominating media occupation for his heroic actives should be debunked as shamelessly selling works to the world(Dillet and Puri, 70). In addition, Groys pointed out that taking advantage of media’s compelling force by political commitment is self-destructing, and undercutting the greatest effort of politicizing artworks(16). Hu Jielin claimed that Ai’s political stance, influence, and art activities are inseparable—the synergy of internal ideology and external production is present. From this perspective, therefore, one downside is concluded as Ai’s “self-publicization.” However, hypermediatisation might reduce the power of his works as opposed to the impact they should have achieved protesting social injustice.  

Third, the other half of Ai Weiwei’s hypermediatisation “aura” considerably comes from Western media’s contribution. Actually, Western pop media accentuated and divinized Ai’s political initiatives over others to appeal to the Western audience since they vividly portray the image of a sympathetic Chinese artist who fights against his government. For example, as opposed to critically evaluating his work or delving into art-making rationale deeply, Western media makes Ai more “favorable” by subtracting Ai’s biography, and these abbreviated versions of his background and context blur Ai’s original intention and “ideological motivation” (Arnett,15). As a result, hypermediatisation might infringe on the audience’s understanding and neglect the versatility of 

Ai’s artist identity.  

As briefly mentioned above, one major explosion case of Western new media happened after Ai’s was detained and accused for tax invasion on 3 April 2011, directing the suppressive act towards a famous artist to China’s human right deprivation and pivotal government regime issue. According to Hu Jielin’s research, not only prestigious mainstream media in the US and the UK immediately reported this “unjust” incident, such as The New York Times and The Guardian, many human rights activists and organizations also inferred Ai Weiwei’s detention to accuse Chinese government’s violation of due process and speech freedom(Hu, 18). As an externality of the global fanfare and debates around Ai, the interpretation of his art pieces has been molded and appeals to a political-monolithic ideology, which ignores their aesthetic richness and the diverse messages they possibly convey. Political science scholar Christian Sorace concludes that it is misleading and imperious to deem Ai’s artworks as purely mirroring the Western multiparty democracy and liberalism. Rather, he believes that Ai’s “iconic” liberal manifestation does not originate merely from political identity, which absorbs multiple schools of thought, but grows from his collective mindset as Chinese tradition and traumatic life experience—particularly his memory of growth during the Cultural Revolution(Sorace, 4).  

Similarly, such a political-monolithic assumption simplifies his artistic persona. One illustrated case provided here is pertinent to his contribution to design Bird Nest project, an architecture design of Beijing National Stadium which functioned as the main venue for the 2008 Olympics. Accompanied by Swiss architect Jacques Herzog and two other co-designers, Ai, seemingly flipped the role from a dissident to a government-sponsored artist, and was suspected as “hypocritical” given his previous attack on the Chinese Communist Party’s human right abuse(Dillet and Puri, 68). However, he confessed regrettably to CNN’s reporter in 2022, when 

Beijing Winter Olympics will use the Bird Nest again, that he can’t change anything and was “disappointed” by the fact that International Olympics committee is “standing next the authoritarians” while ignoring athletes’ human right(CNN, 2022). 

Moreover, the hypermediatisation has been radiated outwardly, expanding the scope from Ai’s artistic and quasi artistic actions(Twitter feed and blog) to his real-life metabolism, as proved in previous paragraphs. Sorace criticizes that Ai’s unique aesthetic improvisation “transforms his life into an open-ended experimental performance,” and he quotes from Ai that “totalitarian regime is my readymade.” The line between art and his fight is ambiguous, and herein we may suspect the legitimacy of the relationship between Ai’s performative actions and his “art” (refers to his 2D and 3D work, or other than his political activities). On the other side, the quality of Ai’s artmaking is relatively weak and sloppy, judging from most of his photography work, which seems less convincing compared to his radical speech. An installation project that Ai made in 2015 shows the essential contradiction between more traditional art making and art under hypermediatisation. An Archive(2015)(see fig.5) transcribed Ai’s 2009-2013 Twitter posts printed in the form of Chinese calligraphy on expensive rice paper. The transformation of digital media to tangible written material ruins the provocative and expressive effect inherent in the Internet, despite the iconic influence he brings about himself. Also, the satire and artistic intention is obscure, detached from the neat and austere physicality of the installation itself.  

Beyond the significance and impact of Ai Weiwei’s hypermediatisation that we discussed above, it is apparent to recognize the destined pathway of him being an artist and activist like that based on the premise of adhering his political belief. Experiencing cultural shock and language barriers, Ai felt like misfitting in both the US and China. In Monica Tan’s interview, Ai said he “didn’t belong to a society which had no freedom of speech.” The power of the Internet not only provides him some closure and a sense of belonging, but also inspires him to explore a broader creative field. Tan indicated that unlike Andy Warhol, who shared the ideology of “celebrating freedom of speech and wisdom of pop-culture,” Ai’s engagement in present political affairs is not fully occupied by consumerism, fame, or “pop-culture iconography.” That said, aside from being critical in viewing the pros and cons of Ai’s hypermediatisation, dismantling the tags and political affiliation, the democracy and openness within his art and the process of creating art should not be overlooked.

Fig.1 A Study of Perspective – White House 1995–2003, Tate digital archive.

Fig.2 (Unknown title), Iconic Picture

Fig.3 Study of Perspective – Tiananmen Square 1995–2003, Tate digital archive.

Fig.4 (Unknown title), Iconic Picture.

Fig. 5 An Archive (2015) Photo: Jenni Carter via Gene and Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney