Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
AI WEIWEII lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I never regret anything.
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I loved New York — every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong — visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.
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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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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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It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
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In China, we don’t have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn’t even have a gallery.
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The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.
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This is a very general understanding of art in China, that being an artist can make you money and turn you into a star.
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The Internet has established a public sphere and developed a pressure which the government can no longer ignore.
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It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we’ll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.
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The relationship between the Chinese government and me is like a Cold War.
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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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The jobs for 7 million university graduates every year, the immense corruption: Even some Western governments would have to scramble to find solutions to such problems.
AI WEIWEI