Naming The Nameless

• Source: The Global Times
• [21:14 May 04 2009]
• Comments

By Wang Weilan

"We're creating the list so that these people are never forgotten, and to ensure that someone is held accountable."

Ai Weiwei
Artist and activist

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei is making a list. A list of schoolchildren killed in the Sichuan earthquake. He’s doing it because he thinks he has to.

“There’s no timetable for this task,” Ai told the Global Times in an exclusive interview last month at his studio Fake in Caochangdi, northeast Beijing.

“We’ll continue to work on it until we have information on every single student who died in the earthquake.”

At the last count, 5,161 names were on Ai’s list, which appears as part of his popular blog on Sina.com. It also includes “investigation diaries” written by a team of volunteers working with Ai to identify each of the students who lost their lives.

Dressed in a faded blue T-shirt and sporting his trademark bushy beard, 51-year-old Ai – the son of renowned poet Ai Qing and an advisor on the Bird’s Nest project – appeared composed as he spoke of his determination to uncover the truth.

“We’re creating the list so that these people are never forgotten, and to ensure that someone is held accountable,” he said.

“We are talking about a whole generation, how can we let them go so easily?”