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.
AI WEIWEIDemocracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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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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There are many cases and layers of racist behavior in the US – from police treatment to the issues of education and job opportunities. In America, however, such cases are being discussed publically.
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Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.
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By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.
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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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Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.
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I think to deal with the situation like human crisis, 65 million people being displaced, lost their home, and with such human tragedy, has to make every level of society to be conscious and to be alert about the situation.
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I don’t believe in a sense of home.
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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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In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want — not only you, your whole family and all people like you.
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[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don’t care about culture.
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I was an illegal alien for many, many years. I couldn’t move. If I moved I could not even get a visa back.
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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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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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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.
AI WEIWEI