Saturday, December 31, 2011

Ten people who changed the world: Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist became a truly global force

For an illustration of Ai Weiwei's unique position of influence in the art world, you could do worse than look at his tax bill. In November, when the Chinese authorities stung the dissident artist with trumped-up charges of 15 million yuan (?1.5 million), members of the public lined up outside his Beijing home to hand over cash. Some of them folded banknotes into paper aeroplanes or scrunched them around fruit and lobbed them over the wall, straight into his courtyard. Within a fortnight, he had raised well over half, enough to pay off the deposit and begin to contest the bill. Like the eight million or so tiny porcelain sunflower seeds with which he carpeted the Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall, his many supporters had come together to stunning effect.

The idea of people queuing up to hand over money to an artist, and getting nothing in return, seems a little quaint in today's ritzy, glitzy, multimillion-grossing art world. Isn't modern art all about yachts and oligarchs, parties and record-breaking auctions? Well, no. Even Charles Saatchi, arguably the man who did most to shape the mores of today's scene, admitted earlier this month that he now finds the whole business "indisputably vulgar, Euro-trashy and masturbatory". With Saatchi's influence now on the wane, it is Ai's model, with its focus on art and ideas, on public engagement and social networking over financial transactions and high-society hobnobbing, which looks like the future.

Indeed, in October, Art Review declared Ai, aged 54, the most powerful figure in art in their annual Power 100 list. The accolade is all the more remarkable for coming at the end of a year in which the Chinese government did everything in its power to stamp out Ai's influence ? in the most violent and sinister way. In January, his newly built studio in Shanghai was demolished overnight. Then, on 3 April, the artist was arrested at Peking airport, vaguely charged with "economic crimes", and disappeared. His accountant, studio partner, driver and assistant also vanished. He was released, 81 days later and 10kg lighter, having been interrogated over 50 times.

The imprisonment was the darkest point of a lengthy intimidation campaign. The son of a poet, Ai Qing, who was denounced by the regime in 1958, Ai grew up in the shadow of the labour camps ? a born radical. In 2008, he was still considered a safe and prestigious enough pair of hands to collaborate on the Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics. Since then, he has become an increasingly vocal critic of the regime, supporting an investigation into cover-ups around the Sichuan earthquake and publishing a list of the students killed on his blog. The authorities responded by beating him, hacking his computer and bank accounts, closing down his blog, before eventually "disappearing" him altogether.

The attempt to silence him, of course, had precisely the opposite effect. Ai became the loudest arts story of the year and an internationally recognised symbol for China ? the face of both its creative potential and its human rights abuses. From the Tate to the Guggenheim, major galleries organised protests, petitions and installations around his arrest, while a wave of graffiti, Mao-style billboards and impromptu performances hit the streets. If Ai Weiwei isn't allowed to make art, they seemed to say, we'll make it for him. "It's never about me," said the artist. "My supporters use me as a mark for themselves to recognise their own form of life: I become their medium."

This collective spirit informs all of his work, as witty and irreverent as it is subversive and radical. The ideas conjured up by his Tate installation ? mass-production, the Communist state, the individual vs society ? are typical. "I spend very little time just doing 'art as art'," he says. In other words, his art lives far beyond the walls of the traditional white cube, whether he's shipping in 1,001 Chinese villagers to wander around the world's biggest contemporary art exhibition, in Germany, or, most famously, employing the citizens of Jingdezhen to produce millions of sunflower seeds for the Tate.

Ai's art is about community, locally rooted but globally significant. The internet is as much one of his tools as paint or clay. When his blog was shut down, he adopted Twitter with gusto, tweeting over 60,000 times in 18 months. Better than most, he understands how to mobilise people-power, making him an artist entirely in tune with a year characterised by mass uprisings and internet revolutions.

As 2011 draws to a close, the government continues to persecute him. Last month, it magicked up pornography charges, but this time his supporters were ready. Within hours, they had taken to the internet, flooding Twitter with naked self-portraits ? some with pictures of Ai strategically positioned over their genitals. Which other artist could provoke such an outpouring? Ai Weiwei is now the world's biggest artist. Wherever he is in the world, the world will be watching what he does next.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/ten-people-who-changed-the-world-ai-weiwei-chinese-artist-became-a-truly-global-force-6282327.html

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Friday, December 30, 2011

University of Utah professor allegedly admitted to trading porn

Authorities Thursday released more information about the search of a University of Utah professor?s Cottonwood Heights home following his child-pornography arrest last month in Boston.

Investigators said 47-year-old Grant Douglas Smith confessed to trading pornographic images of ?teens? online. They wrote that it was imperative that they search his home because Massachusetts investigators feared he planned to ask his girlfriend to destroy some evidence, according to a search warrant made public in 3rd District Court on Thursday. Smith, considered one of the top professors in the world in the field of molecular engineering, was working at the U. at the time of his arrest, the warrant states.

The information comes as the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force continues to probe Smith?s life. Task force members obtained the warrant so they could legally search his Country Wood Circle apartment on Nov. 28. They seized a computer, two hard drives, a cellphone, undeveloped film, an iPod, a video recorder, a camera and a telephone bill, according to the warrant.

Smith was arrested in late November after a Delta airline passenger alleged he saw Smith, who was sitting in first class, viewing child pornography on his laptop computer while travelling from Salt Lake City to Boston.

At the time of the arrest, Smith was divorcing his wife ?? the divorce was expected to be final by Nov. 28 ? and he had moved into the Cottonwood Heights condo during their divorce proceedings. Smith?s wife told authorities their marriage had unraveled more than a year earlier because Smith had cheated, the warrant states. Investigators allege Smith was living with his girlfriend at the residence.

According to the search warrant, Utah investigators became aware of the child-pornography allegations Nov. 26 after a Massachusetts state trooper called to tell them about Smith. The trooper told Utah investigators that Smith had given him permission to search his MacBook computer and iPhone, and authorities found evidence of child pornography on his laptop, the search warrant states. The pornographic images allegedly from a paid site showed naked girls, ages 5 to 10, engaging in sexual activity with adult males, according to the warrant. Smith also told investigators he started deleting pornographic images on his computer during the flight because he was ?bored,? the warrant states.

Massachusetts authorities said they also found ?many images? of fully clothed children on Smith?s iPhone that appeared to have been taken at parks and airports, the warrant states. They also claimed they found an image of child pornography in a folder titled ?Korea? and determined that Smith had just returned from Seoul, Korea, on Nov. 22 after attending a retreat for a retiring professor. Authorities say Smith usually traveled one out of every three weeks and was on his way to a conference when he was allegedly caught with the pornography.

Task force authorities said the University of Utah police already had initiated an investigation into Smith after learning of his arrest and immediately disconnected his office Internet access. The warrant claims the university police were looking for any items that might contain evidence but that were owned by the university. The warrant did not state if any such items were found and if they were turned over to investigators.

jstecklein@sltrib.com

Twitter @sltribjanelle

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53201811-78/smith-warrant-investigators-search.html.csp

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

4Videosoft iPhone 4 Transfer Platinum

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