The invitation to bid process began in 2001, bids were submitted, models were made, exhibitions of the models held, votes were cast and the winning birds nest design by Herzog and De Meuron working with leading Chinese architect Li Xinggang of China Architecture Design and Research Group (CADG) was confirmed by end of March / beginning of April 2003 ......... as is confirmed here:
Beijing National Stadium
and on this contemporaneous New York blog where the design was being discussed on 31 March 2003.......
Beijing Olympic Stadium (the "Bird's Nest") - by Herzog & de Meuron
Note the title of the thread: Beijing Olympic Stadium (the "BIRDS NEST") - by Herzog & de Meuron
AND YET
According to various sources - including Wikipedia - Ai Weiwei's role as "Artistic Consultant" began with a meeting in Basel in APRIL 2003 - so I ask again, despite the endless retrospective credits to and claims by Ai Weiwei as either 'designer' or 'co-designer' of the stadium - HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Has anyone actually spoken to Herzog & De Meuron or Li Xingang about that?
* * * * * * * *
Some of us are only interested in trying to get at the TRUTH about Ai Weiwei and his motivations. There are plenty of genuine dissidents in China worthy of your praise and sympathy - speak to human rights organisations, they'll give you a list.
However, I strongly suspect that Ai Weiwei is NOT one of them. I think there are good reasons to suspect that he cynically exploits the Western Media's appetite for anti-Chinese government stories for his own purposes. I think there are good reasons to suspect that he also callously exploits other peoples misery (within China) to further his own fame and artistic career.
Many genuine critics of the Chinese government are doing so because they have good reason to believe in their cause - i.e. schoolteachers in Sichuan complaining about the alleged school buildings scandal. Some of them end up falling foul of the authorities but Ai Weiwei has made himself a very rich man.
I believe that there are many claims made by Ai Weiwei which deserve closer inspection, for example:
- His claim (or at least lack of denial) that he was the designer or co-designer of the birds nest stadium, thus boosting his 'art' career in the first place.
- His claim that his brain Haemorrhage in 'Germany in September 2009 was directly linked to what he later described as a "severe beating" by chinese police in Sichuan one month earlier on the 12th August (there is even an article in the Guardian dated 12th August based on an Associated Press report quoting Ai Weiwei as saying that there "was a scuffle" in which he received a "punch on the chin" (the Guardian article is here - read the quotation from Ai further down the page) - how did this "punch on the chin" escalate to the "severe beating" including "heavy blows to the head"?
This link between the punch on the chin and the brain haemorrhage a month later is now reported without question in the media.
- What was Ai Weiwei doing in Sichuan / Chengdu anyway? He said he wanted to show support at the trial of Tan Zuoren but he had had nothing to do with the Earthquake or its victims in spring 2008 or Zuoren. He LATER said he was trying to embarass the Chinese government by publishing the names of child victims on his website but that didn't happen until March / April 2009 and the Chinese government published the names anyway in April 2009? So why would they have been embarassed?
The more you look into Ai Weiwei's activities, the less credible his claims really seem - such a shame for those genuine voices of concern he is blotting out by his continual media shouting.
by PantsOnFire2
shakinwilly, 8 November 2010 7:31AM
Ai Wei Wei - For someone lacking democratic rights you get an awful lot of air time. And your government seems content with that.
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