After three years in Berlin, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei now lives in Cambridge in the UK, but his latest film, Coronation, is set in the Chinese city of Wuhan as it undergoes a draconian lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. Using footage filmed by citizens after the Chinese state locked down the city on January 23, Coronation observes the militarised and often brutal nature of the government-enforced quarantine until it was lifted in early April. It also reveals its efficiency in stopping the spread of the virus. Ai Weiwei shared his thoughts about the making of the film, and whether he believes the pandemic will fundamentally change society. Excerpts from an interview:

As with most of my activities, the motivation for making Coronation was to try and gain a deeper knowledge of a new and unfamiliar incident, such as with the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the refugee crisis in 2015. I wanted to provide a first-hand experience in understanding China and the Chinese people and how they responded to the coronavirus. Under these dramatic conditions, we can better understand the politics and humanity of any society.

With today’s technology, remote directing a film is possible. The biggest challenge for a director when approaching a subject is the concept. You can see in the film that young people, nurses and doctors and other health professionals came to Wuhan within days on buses. China is probably the only nation that could achieve that with such speed and spirit. You can see how the state built the infrastructure, including the emergency field hospitals, and equipped those on the frontlines with the necessary rescue equipment. Those details surprised me and are a profound revelation of human behaviour under authoritarian control. We also managed to show how they recruited those young people into the Communist party and the celebration after the lockdown was lifted. Those positive, objective parts about a very highly controlled authoritarian state are difficult to film. You can see another person, a construction worker who came to Wuhan to assist the emergency effort, prevented from leaving the city. He attempts to navigate this typical Kafka-esque bureaucracy to get out. Unfortunately, we later learned Meng Liang managed to return home to be with his family, but he had financial issues and decided to hang himself. A tragic and banal story about life in these times.

I cannot make sure anyone is safe. I gave them daily instruction and they have the absolute choice to film the way they think is safe. They are all equipped with PPE and instructed on necessary medical protocols.

I am very pessimistic about what we will learn from this. I think that things will return to normal, people will simply take off their masks and throw them away into the rubbish bin. I don’t think people will learn that much in general. Even if they have learned something, it will be superficial, like what has happened in China.