The purpose of art is the fight for freedom.
AI WEIWEIChina hasn’t only existed for one day. Now, the whole nation has become richer and it’s become a problem. The problem is universal. The factor is big. Everybody has to rethink the balance of the world and the whole landscape.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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…photographs are facts, but not necessarily true… The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.
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There’s no such thing as “fixed” culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems.
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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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Society becomes very destructive.
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I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that’s the true crime.
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Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught.
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I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.
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A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.
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I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.
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A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.
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It’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.
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But personally, I don’t think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it’s beyond my own consciousness.
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As a human being, member of society, you must clearly state your mind. It’s a responsibility. It is the way you identify yourself otherwise you don’t know who you are and why you are here.
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I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.
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I don’t think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn’t be nervous about that.
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China didn’t want to lose the cutting edge of technology. So the idea of having a Sina Weibo was an attempt to compete with Twitter. However, it has no soul – which is freedom of expression. Nevertheless,
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If it’s possible, I will have some noodles in the morning and start talking to people, start to think about a few things in my head.
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Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.
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How to become a really modern society when today we are so – as a human being, we feel so powerful. We have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive.
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It’s just a way you have to set up some kind of activities to follow your instincts or your curiosities.
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We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp
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If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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I never had a sense of home.
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It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we’ll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.
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I don’t think my father had a direct influence on me, but I do think, more or less, I was influenced by his independent individualism.
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