Caochangdi Art District is an art zone in the suburb of Beijing. It started out when Ai Weiwei built his studio there, in 1999. A rumor that the district is about to be demolished has circulated for years, fueled both by China’s aggressive reurbanization model and by recurrent episodes of censorship to the arts in the country. The artist tries to destroy the rumor through a symbolic act. At the same time, he uses a specific situation to explore the complexity of the contemporary notion of urban monuments.
