Day 10 / Fairytale — Rx/Museum

Jan 3

Jan 3 Day 10 / Fairytale

Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put . . . creativity is the power to act.

—Ai WeiWei

In 2007, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei initiated “Fairytale,” a massive conceptual and logistic undertaking that brought 1,001 people from across Mainland China to Kassel, Germany. While there, they lived in communal housing, photographed life in Kassel, and visited Documenta 12, a global art exhibition that occurs every five years. Ai Weiwei installed 1,001 wooden chairs at the exhibition as “a symbolic gesture of memory and our past.” For Ai Weiwei, the chairs represented both the collective whole and each individual’s unique dreams and memories. The participants, in turn, left behind tens of thousands of photographs, interviews, and other traces of their time in Kassel, all archived online. The project’s title is a reference to the fairytales authored by the Brothers Grimm, who were born in Kassel in the 1700s. Because Ai Weiwei selected people who would not have been able to travel otherwise, the project was a kind of contemporary fairytale. It enabled laid-off workers, farmers, and villagers from the countryside who had never left their provinces to experience another culture and country.

These memories of traveling through new, unfamiliar spaces, however, continued to transform the participants’ lives even after their return home. Similarly, illness, suffering, or hospitalization can displace us from normal life and can be profoundly foreign. Perhaps you feel you are in survival mode or navigating feelings of isolation or fear.

reflections

How can you sense the community of others in the hospital even if you can’t see them?
Like the travelers in “Fairytale,” how can you document your experiences and share your struggles with others?
How can your time in the hospital be transformative for you?

Sources

Ai Weiwei. “童话项目 / Fairytale Project / Fairytale-Projekt.” Fairytale (project website). Accessed October 13, 2021. Fairytaleproject.net.

Burnbaum, Daniel. Ai Weiwei: Fairytale: A Reader. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2012.

Lee, Melissa and Aaron Levy. Fairytale Project. Slought Foundation. Last modified November 11, 2014. https://slought. org/resources/fairytale_workshops.

Jiang, YiJun. “The Social Subversion and Improvement of the Relationship– Ai Weiwei's ‘Fairytale.’” Medium, November 16, 2018. medium.com/@yijunjiang_61375/the-social-subversionand-improvement-of-the-relationship-ai-weiweis-fairytalef187803d11dd.