Today I had a bad thought about our government. I think I should turn myself in for a civic crime. I think that everybody who has bad thoughts about their government, about their boss, about their parents, about their religion should turn themselves in. Why? Because I really do not want to be in a world inhabited by disciplinarian self-righteous status quo advocates.

I do not want to be free among individuals who value regression, fear, and stagnation — I want to be jailed with the villains. I want to be in detention with David Wojnarowicz, with Jean Genet, with Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, with Ai Weiwei. I'd rather be imprisoned with artists, intellectuals, and citizens whose work and actions makes us think and question rather than bend over with a smile to the oppression of convention.

On April 3, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained by immigration officials at the Beijing airport, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. Today, nearly two weeks later, he remains in detention, under investigation for the nebulous and unexplained offense of "economic crimes” and alleged pornography. Since then, assistants, staff, and volunteers at Ai Weiwei's studio have been extensively questioned, his family has not been notified of his detainment, and he has not been seen.
 
When a regime imprisons its artists and its thinkers, it exercises brute censorship and demonstrates its fear. Not so much fear of the art or of the artists, but the fear of what the regime has become. It reveals its fear of losing control, its fear of what is different, and its fear of questions that might force a reconsideration of its values. Such regimes fear the barbarians within, the barbarians that they have become. These regimes are about to collapse. They can build a Great Wall to protect themselves, a Maginot line to control the invasion, but these edifices only blind them from their true enemy: themselves, and their own desire for power and control, their belief in their own self-importance.
 
Ai Weiwei's detention reflects the extreme anxiety that has rocked China and other oppressive governments since the beginning of this year. Following Egypt's Facebook revolution in January, we have watched as nation after nation seeks to silence its most vocal critics, and to stamp down the opposition movements that spread like wildfire across social media platforms. This is our modernity; this is the moment when irrelevant representations of power and oppressive discourses and conventions are vacillating. The old models cannot apply any more.

Ai Weiwei understands the power of technology and has deployed Twitter as a bully pulpit to express his harsh criticism of China's communist government. His imprisonment reveals the incendiary power of his art and his voice. Ai Weiwei, the individual, has been silenced because his art cannot be. And his art goes beyond our conventional understanding of art. His art is his ability to be a poet, a sculptor, a politician, an architect, a merchant, an activist, a citizen, a trickster. Ai Weiwei is the fou du roi, the sole person who is authorized to poke at the king because the king knows that his position is only as powerful as his acceptance of the critic. The minute the buffoon is silenced, the king is naked, and the king knows that it is not pretty.

Today the king is naked and Ai Weiwei's detention is both a tragedy and a triumph over barbarism. As a group, as citizens, the art community must support him so that this experience can serve as a fulcrum for change. Tomorrow I might turn myself in to support Ai Weiwei and to demonstrate that ideas are more dangerous than power. If you do not turn yourself in, then please join me in demonstrating opposition to Ai Weiwei's detention by signing a petition for his release, or participating in a peaceful sit-in outside Chinese Embassies around the world on Sunday, April 17, at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard time.     

Philippe Vergne is the director of Dia Art Foundation. The opinions expressed here are the author's own.   

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