Ai Weiwei and sunflower seeds

A Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, now sends out a twitter each night at midnight naming those children whose birthday it would of been had they survived the earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008. The names of the children were gathered by a grieving father, Tan Zuoren, who was investigating why more than 5,000 children lost their lives when the school buildings they were in collapsed during the earthquake. Tan has been sentenced to five years imprisonment for inciting and advocating for an investigation.

Fellow investigator, Huang Qi, has been imprisoned for “illegally possessing state secrets,” according to the text of the court resolution. Under the one-child policy, in place since 1979, many of the children who died were from one-child families. Think about losing your first born child.

Ai Weiwei went to Sichuan to help demonstrate with Tan. He too was beaten. He said: "art is expressing through a special channel your emotions towards something you are most interested in, not hanging a picture on a wall and thinking how much you can sell it for."

Three weeks after the beating in Germany, Ai Weiwei underwent surgery for a brain haemorrhage caused by the beating.

His latest work is Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern, London. I write of this after a late night email to my son, Stefan. He said he wanted to see more art with me in Sydney. And I mentioned Ai Weiwei. I don't know how we suffer for causes.

Slovakian Marxist Slavoj Zizeck paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, said "every monument of civilization is a monument to barbarism." This is one of those moments. Sylvia Plath's poem, Daddy, is a tense and horrid poem.

It evokes a barbaric state and those who think they can restart a society in the name of High Culture too.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.