Undisciplined Art


Fascinating online discussion as part of the Charleston Festival at Home between the artist Ai Weiwei and Tim Marlow, CEO of the Design Museum. 

As a regular all event ticket holder at the Charleston Festival, which was obviously cancelled this year, I have enjoyed the alternative online events they have run every evening throughout the festival. All the events were excellent but the others were more literary so they haven’t made it into this blog, however the last event was a firmly artistic one so I feel I can add it! 

The discussion, which is available on Youtube, suffered a bit from Zoom sound issues, but was an interesting interview of this contemporary artist. They began by talking about the role of place in his art as he bases in Cambridge and Berlin leading on to how lockdown effects this sense of place and how it has affected his creativity. He said that his rather nomadic life keeps him alert even though it is uncomfortable and it fuels his creative ideas. As for lock down he felt it puts us all in the same condition and is a leveler. 

I was fascinated by the section where Ai Weiwei talked about his 85 days in prison and how he had worked out that, not only did he not know where he was being held, but his guards didn’t know where they were either. He managed to one of his guards after his release and I would love to have heard more about that meeting. 

In a section near the end he talked about some work he is doing in Wuhan. It was a it hard to hear what he was saying at this point so rather than misreport I would recommend you listen to that section  and see what you feel he is saying. 

All in all a fascinating discussion and here’s hoping that next year we will be back in the marquee to hear such events live.  


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