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.
AI WEIWEINow I’ve come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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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.
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I never had secure, belonging feelings with this society [in China].
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I deal with students every day – from China, Germany, the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And I’ve noticed that the Chinese students are the least trained in having a sense of aesthetics.
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Everything is selected by the central government without good judgment or an understanding of culture to make it really safe. They will become nobody to maintain their power and be raised to the next higher level.
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Hopefully, other successes aren’t like me. It carries much more meaning to other people; my success story is irrelevant. It doesn’t make any sense.
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I also doubt a man can give really clear reasons for anything.
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I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.
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China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.
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My angst and my insecurity reflect the state’s angst and insecurity. The state is scared too.
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New York has given me a lot, but I still don’t consider it home.
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I don’t personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.
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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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Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don’t feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy.
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We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp
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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 WEIWEI






