ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the materialities and medialities of the dead body through a political lens. It provides the two paradigms like the forensic and the memorial. The chapter aims to understand the complex and multifarious remediation of a given corpse image, constantly distancing it from its purported referent through acts of commenting, forwarding, augmenting or even through bodily re-enactment by users. The chapter describes the artistic re-enactment of the kind that brings to the fore ethical and political questions regarding the responsibility of the living witness of the corpse image of the unjustly dead. Ai Weiwei himself is a prolific blogger, enthusiastic user of the Twitter and Instagram platforms and maker of parodic memes and videos, who has incorporated social media as an integral part of his art practice. By lying down on the beach and photographing himself, he simply picked up on what social media users were already doing namely memeifying the corpse of the dead Other.
