Livestream | Ai Weiwei: Sewing A Button

The live stream will begin on this page at 5pm on Friday 3 July. You do not need a ticket to access the live stream.

Ai Weiwei re-enacts his secret detention in Sewing a Button – an unflinching 24-hour live performance.

Fifteen years ago, Ai Weiwei was secretly detained without any formal charges by Public Security in China. For 81 days, he lived in a single cell, eating his meals, washing and exercising between interrogations. Now Weiwei presents Sewing a Button – a 24-hour live performance work re-enacting this brutal, life-changing experience.

Mirroring themes of surveillance in the artist's work, audiences can also watch Sewing a Button around the world online via Factory International, and at screenings at ACMI (Australia), ARTHAUS (Argentina) and CIRCA (London).

Marking roughly 15 years since Ai Weiwei’s release, the piece takes its title from a poignant moment from his detention: after two months of living without a button to hold his trousers up, a guard finally brought needle and thread to mend them.

The internationally renowned artist, activist and champion of free expression has revisited this period before  in works such as S.A.C.R.E.D (2013), 81 (2013) and Dumbass (2013) –  but Sewing a Button marks the first time his detention will be re-enacted live.

Unsettling and provocative, Sewing a Button exposes the fragility of personal freedoms in today’s uncertain world.

The interrogators are journalists and broadcasters Nihal Arthanayake, Emma Dabiri, Lemn Sissay and Zing Tsjeng.

Each will pose a series of questions to Ai Weiwei – from the personal to the political to the philosophical.

Ai Weiwei: Sewing a Button will be livestreamed at venues across the world including ACMI (Melbourne, Australia), ARTHAUS (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Dover Street Market Paris (France).

From 8-8.20pm on Friday 3 July, the performance will be livestreamed to Piccadilly Lights on Piccadilly Circus in London, as part of CIRCA's work bringing art to public spaces.