Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
AI WEIWEIThe purpose of art is the fight for freedom.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.
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I think I’m just a traveler. When you walk across a river and there’s no bridge, you build one. I’m used to having to deal with Chinese Communist ideology.
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These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
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Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one’s imagination – perhaps more importantly – creativity is the power to act.
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Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.
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To give a price to an artwork, no matter how high or low, is always absurd. It’s not something that can be measured by money or by certain numbers.
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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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You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.
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Nationality started as something natural, but we should not be restrained by the old politics that make up these clear lines. It should have its own way of evolving. In some places, it will evolve slower and in others, faster.
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I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.
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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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The leadership knows that you cannot solve the issues of China’s future with the means of the past. The demographic consequences of the one-child policy, the build-up of the welfare state.
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Liberty is about the right to question everything.
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I’m doing quite a few things now. In one day, I will go to Kassel, Germany, for a documentary project I’ve been preparing for half a year.
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Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don’t feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy.
AI WEIWEI