Globalizing Ai Weiwei

Abstract

This chapter explores how Alison Klayman’s documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012) mediates the art and filmmaking practices of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. It argues that the film and its paratexts emphasize the performative elements of Ai’s practices, thus reinforcing his overseas image as a political dissident. While this is partly a consequence of market pressure, the highly embodied quality of Ai’s performative interventions also lends itself most to the commercial reformulation of the artist’s image, and is therefore central to his global appeal, a fact of which Ai himself is clearly aware. In turn, this awareness shapes his engagement with overseas media who help to spread this image, further complicating the question of where we should locate creative authority in the intermedial exchange that Klayman’s film embodies.