Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern. Meh

[il_bastardo]

A guy I work with is freinds with one of the curators at the tate modern....

You are meant to walk on it and crush it all up, but the security guards protested that they weren't prepared to take the risk of standing in there for prolonged periods of time and inhaling the dust.

So security are dictating the show now? That's just wrong and beyond precious. Some people work with genuinely dangerous and dusty compounds and chemicals all day, every day and they wear masks. Can't Tate Security do the same, if they're that concerned.

EDIT....\ off the Tate website:
Although porcelain is very robust, we have been advised that the interaction of visitors with the sculpture can cause dust which could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time. In consequence, Tate, in consultation with the artist, has decided not to allow members of the public to walk across the sculpture.

Sunflower Seeds is a total work made up of millions of individual pieces which together from a single unique surface. In order to maintain and preserve the landscape as a whole, Tate asks visitors not to touch or remove the sunflower seeds

Given they're not even letting people reach over and touch the seeds now, their reason for not being able to walk on it looks like more of the same "preseving integrity", rather than conceding to the demands of amathophobic staff.

Great photos by the way.

 

[8115]

I went to see this today, I really liked it. I found it quite moving, I loved the film too. I know very little about China and I kind of felt that this gave me more of an understanding of the country that I didn't have before. The colours were very beautiful with the grey of the Turbine Hall. I always think of China as such a giant country but there are (I think) 4 x as many people in China as sunflower seeds in the work, which made it much more easy to conceptualise for me.

 

[Dillinger4]

Ai Weiwei still missing after being held by Chinese police
Artist's assistants and wife released but his whereabouts not disclosed by Beijing authorities

Ai Weiwei, China's best-known artist, remains missing more than a day after he was detained. Police have confiscated dozens of items from his studio.

Officers released his wife and several assistants late last night, following questioning, but Ai and a friend remain uncontactable. Assistants said that police removed more than 30 computers and hard drives from his studio and home in north Beijing on Sunday, as well as notebooks and documents. They also searched at least two more properties connected to the artist.

The scope of the police operation, and the fact that Ai was detained at Beijing airport on Sunday morning – not turned away from his flight, as had happened before – has increased the concern of friends. Officials had also visited his studio three times in the week before his detention.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/04/ai-weiwei-missing-chinese-police