Law of the Journey Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Mar 16 2017

Location: 

Prague

The exhibition Law of the Journey is Ai Weiwei’s multi-layered, epic statement on the human condition: an artist’s expression of empathy and moral concern in the face of continuous, uncontrolled destruction and carnage. Hosted in a building of symbolic historical charge – a former 1928 Trade Fair Palace which in 1939–1941 served as an assembly point for Jews before their deportation to the concentration camp in Terezín – it works as a site-specific parable, a form of (public) speech, carrying a transgressive power of cathartic experience, but also a rhetoric of failure, paradox and resignation. Like Noah’s Ark, a monumental rubber boat is a contemporary vessel of forced exodus, floating hopelessly within the immense, oceanic abyss of the Gallery’s post-industrial, cathedral-like Big Hall. Set for a journey across the unknown and the infinite, an overcrowded life raft carries ‘the vanguard of their people’, as Hannah Arendt described the illegal and the stateless in her seminal 1943 essay, We Refugees: over 300 figures, squeezed within the confines of a temporary shelter, undertake a journey ‘far out into the unnavigated’, fleeing violence and danger.

External sources: 

https://www.collater.al/en/the-law-of-the-journey-installation-ai-weiwei/
https://artpil.com/news/law-of-the-journey-ai-weiwei/
Posted by vanessaw_ on Apr 7 2024

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
Does nothing (at all)Doesn't really have an impact, beyond possibly expressing the artist-activist's dissatisfaction with the world.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.
Sustains (change)Support and celebrate change that has already been won and needs to be sustained.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
Through its focus on the refugee crisis and human rights, it aims to foster deeper understanding, empathy, and systemic change in societal attitudes towards immigrants and refugees. These are not issues that can be resolved quickly but require sustained effort and shifts in perspective over time, highlighting the need for long-term engagement and transformation in how communities and governments approach human rights and displacement.

Notes

It is highly effective in drawing global attention to the refugee crisis and advocating for human rights. Through its poignant display and Ai's reputation, it stimulates public discourse, empathy, and awareness on a broad scale, although changing deeply entrenched societal or political attitudes is a complex, gradual process. Its effectiveness lies in its capacity to humanize the refugee experience and challenge viewers to reflect on their own positions and responsibilities within this global issue.