Had I to create a name for these times, I’d say it is the age of craziness
AI WEIWEILife is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.
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Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you.
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No state or society can claim to have established human rights once and for all.
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There’s no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
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I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable – how we decide what is valuable.
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This world should be much more open and should be much more free, so the young people would have the chance to exercise the quality of their lives.
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I think it’s more important to show your work to the public.
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Today, we jump into this globalization of the economy and the internet age.
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People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China’s relationship with the outside world.
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You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it’s empty.
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To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary.
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My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall.
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A few thousand are to be built in the next few years, all using taxpayer money. But there is no system, no research, no content, no good programs, no good managers.
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The whole Chinese system – not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society – is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information.
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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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Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market.
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It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.
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They see how dramatic U.S. has to be put this kind of shame on its own – cannot handle the situation. Or show such a difficulty with this liberal ideas. Men or women created equal. And to defend those very essential ideas.
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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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So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.
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In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.
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You know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today’s life and no discussion of the real conditions – which is really sickening.
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Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.
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The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.
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I was in the most restricted prison in China, the most tough. The design of the prison is modeled for internal crimes of the Communist party, so it’s like a mafia family’s law. It’s independent to the law this nation openly applies.
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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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