Ai Weiwei brings a uniquely informed perspective on censorship and self-censorship, shaped by his compelling personal history, offering readers profound insights into an important topic of current relevance. This publication offers a compelling exploration of censorship and self-censorship. Drawing on his personal experiences and advocacy for the rights of others, Ai Weiwei provides a uniquely informed perspective. He examines how censorship persists in authoritarian regimes as well as subtly within democratic frameworks, corporate power and social media, arguing that its concealed and pervasive nature poses a significant threat to genuine freedoms of expression. This thought-provoking work invites readers to critically reconsider power, ideology and the boundaries of free speech.

Autorentext

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing) is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today's geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values. Ai currently resides and works in Berlin, and is the recipient of the 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. His most recent book is 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: Two lives, one nation and a century of art under tyranny in China (2022).

Klappentext

**A Sunday Times Bestseller

A thought-provoking work by a singular voice, this short, sharp essay invites us to critically reconsider power, ideology and the boundaries of free speech.**

Invisible, invasive and widely taken for granted, censorship is a globalized force as much driven by commercial interests as political agendas. Ai Weiwei - artist, activist and one of the world's most influential cultural figures - has first-hand experience of its power. In this urgent piece of writing, he makes a rallying cry for free speech in an age shaped by big data, mass surveillance and intrusive new technologies of control.

Ai Weiwei examines how censorship persists both in the overt propagandizing and redactions of authoritarian regimes, as well as subtly within democratic frameworks, exploring how international corporations, cultural institutions, social media and so-called ideologies of 'freedom' have provided fertile ground for new, more insidious, suppressions.