The
news cycle giveth and the news cycle taketh away. Just when Laura Poitras posted
her latest piece of Edward Snowden brand management, news reports suggest he
may have indeed done the one thing he absolutely, positively promised never to
do: share sensitive intelligence with the Russian and Chinese governments. One
wonders what Ai Weiwei would have to say about that? Regardless, it certainly
casts his appearance in Poitras’s short in a different light. Freshly released
as part of the New York Times Op-Doc
series, Art of Dissent is one of two relatively
recent short films available online, featuring Teacher Ai, the second being
Jason Wishnow’s The Sand Storm, which
can be found on Fandor.
Ai
Weiwei’s Art of Dissent is one of his
more conceptual works, conceived in collaboration with Wikileaks’ Jacob
Appelbaum. As Poitras records the process, the artist and the activist replace
the stuffing inside thirty plush pandas with shredded Snowden documents. Of
course, Appelbaum points out the choicer passages, but there is no word whether
information on Chinese dissidents like himself are included—and certainly not
whether they were turned over to his Communist tormentors.
Poitras
does indeed include descriptions of Ai’s punishing period of captivity, but
Andreas Johnsen’s Ai Weiwei: the Fake Case is a far better source for insight on this period. Although Ai emerges
as a principally consistent critic of intrusive government, he may later feel
uncomfortable embracing Snowden and wikileaks. Unfortunately, it is easier to
assume the worst about Snowden now, because Poitras refused to ask hard
questions of him when she had the chance, like what does he think of the human
rights records of his host countries and what role if any did the FSB play in
bringing his girlfriend to Russia? By sticking to softballs, she did Snowden a
grave disservice.
Wishnow’s
The Sand Storm is also somewhat topical,
since it depicts Ai as a Chinese water-smuggling Mad Max. Frankly, Wishnow’s
film looks so much like a proof-of-concept short, it ought to end by saying: “to
be continued with your money.” Regardless, Teacher Ai brings a quiet mischievousness
to the proceedings as the dystopian lone wolf, while Bai Yao is absolutely
terrific as the betrayed wife he takes under his wing. It would be great to see
more of her and Ai in this world, but one wonders if his schedule (or the
authorities) would permit feature-length shoots.
