One-Time Performance: 'Ai Weiwei: The Seed' at Brooklyn Museum July 24

By Duyanpili (Photo © Gao Yuan 高远, 2009) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Spoken word artist Kelly Tsai is putting together a one-time multimedia performance depicting Ai Weiwei at the Brooklyn Museum on July 24.

"Ai Weiwei: The Seed" is a live music, video, dance and spoken word piece exploring the roots of Ai Weiwei's political consciousness and emergence as one of the world's foremost artists and thinkers.

Chinese artist, political activist (and top tier professional blackjack player) Ai Weiwei was secretly detained by the Chinese government for 81 days in 2011.

From Asian American Writers Workshop:

The performance tracks the artist's life from his childhood in exile with his political poet father Ai Qing to his formative decade in NYC (1981-1993) as a street artist in Williamsburg and the East Village, where he also befriended poet Allen Ginsberg.

Performed as a contemporary mash-up of found text from Ai Weiwei's social media, poetry from Ai Qing and Ginsberg, and new spoken word by Tsai, Tsai says, "This piece is my homage to an artist whose story is not only Chinese, but American; an artist who is not only visual, but informed by the word and political poetry; an artist who understands his role not only as a creator, but as an 'obsessed citizen' as he says, 'forever questioning and asking for accountability."

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