This week's statement in the New Yorker acted as a reminder that Ai WeiWei had withdrawn from the opening of his retrospective at The Hirshhorn Museum as he's still yet to be allowed his travel Visa from China, and subsequently didn't participate in this year's New Yorker Festival as well. And where we don't get WeiWei himself stateside, we do get more of his art in the form of the University of Washington hosting 5 of his rarely screened films from the retrospective curated by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts earlier this summer. The university screening marks only the second time they've been shown in the states. I'm most anticipating "Disturbing the Peace" and it's exploration of the Sichuan earthquake, the corruption that led to poor building construction and the deaths of thousands including 512 Wenchuan students. As well as the docu on the otherworldly modern development that is the Kangbashi New Area of Ordos City in "Ordos 100" designed to fit a plan co-plotted by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei choreographing 100 architects from 27 countries in their collective creation of a 1000-square-meter villa at the center of the city. Many of us know Ordos from this fantastic anomaly designed by MAD Architects.
