I think Allen [Ginsberg] was a person who’s like a child.
AI WEIWEII think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it’s very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I don’t like China. Even today, I still feel I have no emotional relations with this place.
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Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.
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The practice of photography is no longer a means for recording reality. Instead, it has become reality itself
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The society was so different [in China] – it was a feudalistic society. It didn’t come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
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We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.
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The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that’s all I know.
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Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.
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I think the government regrets having Sina Weibo, but they cannot shut it down. That would definitely be suicidal.
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We should use this public sphere and redefine – beyond China’s borders – what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen’s privacy begins.
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The tragic reality of today is reflected in the true plight of our spiritual existence. We are spineless and cannot stand straight.
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Creativity is the power to act.
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Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I’ll find my way – or get totally lost.
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To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects.
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For those actors and directors who produce films which are always about the old kingdom or about heroes.
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I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.
AI WEIWEI