The exhibition on Chinese artist, architect and urbanist Ai Weiwei is put on display at AedesLand after Ai Weiwei’s campaign "Fairytale". Created for Aedes, his installation "Traveling Landscape" plays ironically with the journey of the suitcases, which traveled with the 1001 Chinese visitors to Germany. Just like the accommodation and fittings for the documenta guests in Kassel, they had been designed especially by Ai Weiwei, each of them a unique specimen. By now, the suitcases have finished their global container journeys – Beijing – Kassel – Beijing – Berlin – just like most of the everyday objects that surround us today.
The catalogue "FAKE design in the Village" conveys the fight of the surrounding villages against the encroaching city of Beijing. The inexorable urbanization in China, which has enclosed the inner city of Beijing with four motorway circuits in concentric belts, has begun to reach the formerly peaceful village of Caochangdi. The area is located in the wedge between the fifth motorway circuit and the expressway to the airport. Traffic permitting; the drive to the city centre is half an hour.
The artist Ai Weiwei moved to the village of Caochangdi at the end of the nineties, where inexpensive land was available. In agreement with the parish council, a residence and studio building was erected in a performance lasting one hundred days with local building material and tradesmen. With this project, a second career as architect and urbanist was taking shape for Ai Weiwei which allowed him to realize his novel spatial ideas, all of which are geared towards the needs of art and art production. They are special refuges in a gigantic revolution, which does not stop at this typical village. Like the implants of a counter world they connect village life to the international art market. This creates an individual dynamics, which in this form seems possible only in China, and is accompanied by an atmosphere of excited activity.
Speakers at the opening:
- Kristin Feireiss; Aedes
- Eduard Kögel; Urban Planner, Curator, Writer of a variety of publications about Chinese architecture.