GUEST OF HONOUR
NYBA 2013
How do we honor the dead? How do we commit them to memory? And how do we come to terms with the way they died?
To start, we can name them. At least, that's the idea behind two installations at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. The first lists information — including names and ages — about the thousands of children who were killed in a massive earthquake in Sichuan, China, in 2008. They're printed in Chinese on white paper that takes up an entire wall. In the second, those names are read aloud through speakers. The audio takes 3 hours and 41 minutes to play through.
Both are part of "According to What?" — an exhibition that showcases the work of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
To compile the list, Ai ran afoul of Chinese authorities by having citizen investigators collect the names of more than 5,000 children who were killed when their schools collapsed in the earthquake. He also asked his Twitter followers to record the names of the dead and email them to him, believing many to be the victims of shoddy construction.
When Ai published those names on his popular blog, government censors shut it down. A few months later, he was beaten by police and had to have emergency brain surgery.
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