“Freedom is a pretty strange thing. Once you've experienced it, it remains in your heart, and no one can take it away. Then, as an individual, you can be more powerful than a whole country.”-Ai Weiwei
Though Ai Weiwei's new art project, @LARGE, is on Alcatraz, he would be the first to admit no man is an island. A series in solidarity, I'm Weiwei addresses many of the issues that confront this great Chinese artist-basic human rights, free expression, incarceration, abuses of state power-but it does so by examining how an individual's personal principles connect to a greater cultural good. A half-dozen innovative documentaries offer portraits of men and women who have found themselves actively engaged, whether in response to unexpected circumstance or as a result of a calculated allegiance to a cause. I'm Weiwei traces the many measures of commitment, from the artful activism of Steve Kurtz to the poetic resistance of John Trudell, from the rabble-rousing of Haiti's Jean Léopold Dominique to the undaunted pacifism of Palestine's Ayed Morrar. We also include the premiere of Ai's own Appeal ¥15,220,910.50, a personal, heavily nuanced glimpse of his Kafkaesque tangles with China's Taxation Bureau. Ai Weiwei once said “A life lived in silence is not a life.” This series looks at people who have made a big noise.