If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I’m saying is common sense.
AI WEIWEIEven though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that’s the 1980s. New York in the ’80s was not so interesting.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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Otherwise, I think the building can be bigger, larger, and the city can be much more crazy. The problem is the government structure is so deadly stupid, not really solving problems but creating a lot of problems itself every day.
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There isn’t a single Chinese university that can invite me to give a talk. Even though I know there are many students who would like to hear what I have to say.
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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’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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You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
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Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be.
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Any politician who respects China’s government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues – both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
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You’re still being looked at as somebody who – it’s a very complicated issue.
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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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Had I to create a name for these times, I’d say it is the age of craziness
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I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.
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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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These are nonviolent people who have lost their freedom simply because they expressed their ideas….In truth, they are heroes of our time.
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Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind.
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A historical property has morals and ethics of the society that created it and it can be revived. What I mean is that we can discover new possibilities from the process of dismantling, transforming, and recreating.
AI WEIWEI