Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don’t design it, somebody else has to design it.
AI WEIWEIThe deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness – doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any little development. Once it is out there, everybody can make their own judgement.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.
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A lot of the time [in the U.S.], I was thinking about how spending time is always questionable or is always the biggest obstacle in my life.
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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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The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that’s all I know.
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For me, it is OK as long as I can breathe, as long as my heart is pumping, as long as I can express myself.
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You need a purpose to express yourself, but that expression is its own purpose.
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I was in the most restricted prison in China, the most tough. The design of the prison is modeled for internal crimes of the Communist party, so it’s like a mafia family’s law. It’s independent to the law this nation openly applies.
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The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.
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New York has given me a lot, but I still don’t consider it home.
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I think art is a very important weapon to achieve human freedom
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If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.
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This world should be much more open and should be much more free, so the young people would have the chance to exercise the quality of their lives.
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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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I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.
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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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