Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei; born 28 August 1957 in Beijing) is a Chinese Contemporary artist and activist. His father's side's original surname is 蔣 Jiang. Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. As a political activist, he has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He has investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth18 May 1957
CityBeijing, China
CountryChina
The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that.
Imagine one day, the hateful world around you collapses. And it is your attitude, words and actions that put an end to it. Will you be excited?
Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.
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.
We should leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth, and corrodes mankind’s belief that we can better ourselves. The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war, and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern, and good intentions.
Life is never guaranteed to be safe, so we better use it while we are still in good condition.
I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that's the true crime.
I have to find a place for my own. I have to search for my own happiness.
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. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.
You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.
The Internet changes the structure of society all the time—this massiveness made of individuals.
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.