One day after Ai Weiwei uploaded his video to the net, it was blocked by the Chinese authorities.
The Guardian has replaced the original video posted a few days ago by this commented piece, so some of the charm of Ai Weiweis original video is now lost.
It took Ai Weiwei one day to produce this parody of the original Gangnam hit, uncovering it´s original lack of meaning and emptiness: the original video is about fashion, hipness and expensive cars and about some dancing that is supposed to be funny. Maybe it is. Ai Weiwei undermined the original, by taking the fashionable parts of it and now these snippets stand for the nouveau rich in Chinese society. By replacing the original singer by himself Ai Weiwei gives through his person and “the little help of friends” Gangnam style a wholly new meaning: no longer a piece of nonsense Ai Weiweis Gangnam style has become a piece about censorship, surpression, imprisonement. It has become a piece about the few, who do profit from the conditions in China, and its about the solidarity of friends. It is about fatigue, depression and about the love of life even under difficult conditions. Last but not least Ai Weiwei managed effortlessly to express all of this undercover, mimicking the highly successful original and eventually reaching even people who don´t find their way into the white cubes of this world.
