Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.
AI WEIWEII 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.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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The IT people who have made such an effort to know and understand computer technology. They are frustrated that you cannot use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in China. They are the first to recognize that the situation is terrible.
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That’s why the country can’t face up to open competition – unless it resorts to measures like North Korea.
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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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In my life, I often make so-called major decisions by very quick, immediate responses.
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[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.
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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.
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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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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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In the end, I think, the state’s rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.
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I’m just bringing them to Kassel to see the art show, and pay their room and board.
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Destroy or build. Crazy or noncrazy. I’m not nostalgic about the old city. I don’t enjoy it that much.
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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.
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China didn’t want to lose the cutting edge of technology. So the idea of having a Sina Weibo was an attempt to compete with Twitter. However, it has no soul – which is freedom of expression. Nevertheless,
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We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp
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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.
AI WEIWEI