Ai Weiwei Speaks

Picked this up in the Tate Modern the last time I was there (June 2011). It had just been published and there was a sort of poetic justice to buying a book of interviews with Ai Weiwei in the very building where his Sunflower Seeds had been for nearly a year. The book collects several interviews with the Chinese artist by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. It is also an incredibly political work as it highlights Ai Weiwei's political vision at the time when Chinese authorities had 'disappeared' him for nearly three months.

Bibliographery

 * Obrist, Hans Ulrich 2011. "Ai Weiwei Speaks" Penguin, London.

On Technology + Art

 * "I definitely thing technology created a new world because our brains, from the very beginning, are based on digesting and absorbing information. That's how we function, but, in fact, conditions state to change and we don't even know if. Theory always come later. But these really are fantastic times" (7)


 * "But, really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment." (7)


 * Hans Ulrich Obrist: You Produce the Moment?
 * AWW: Exactly. Because we're actually a part of reality, and if we don't realize that we are totally irresponsible. We are a productive reality. We are the reality, but that part of reality means we need to produce another reality" (7)


 * "I believe that, thanks to the possibilites provided by computer technology and communication, great changes have taken place in art in this new era." (32)


 * What is your favorite word?
 * Freedom
 * What's the moment we are all waiting for?
 * The moment we least want.


 * "The blog is the modern drawing. Whatever I say there could be seen as part of my work. It gives the most information: it shows my complete surroundings. (45)


 * "You ask yourself the best way to make this virtual reality public through cybertechnology. It's kind of weird at the beginning. It's like if you throw something into a river: it immediately disappears, but it's in there and it changes the volume of the river, depending on how many objects are thrown in" (47)

Writing, Poetry, Politics

 * "People are afraid to write anything down; any words put on paper can be used as evidence of a crime. That's why Chinese intellectuals are so careful now" (47)


 * "I'd give up my art for writing. For me, it's the most beautiful and effective way to illustrate my thinking" (48)


 * "Poetry for me is almost like a religious feeling. Sometimes you feel infinity in it." (49)


 * "I think that poetry is for keeping our intellect in the stage before rationality. ... the most important thing is that it brings us to the innocent stage in which imagination and language can be most vulnerable and at the same time most penetrating" (51)


 * "Calligraphy is the traces of a mind, or maybe an emotion or thought." (85)

Photography

 * "I do take small photographs like a type of evidence" (65)


 * "You also build up your sensitivity to the world. It's like an animal with many, many antennae. Everyone tries to grab at reality in some way." (65)


 * "Taking photos is like breathing. It becomes part of you." (84)

Art / History

 * "After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and an attitude than producing some product." (87)


 * "And of course all activities or artworks should be social. Even in the Middle Ages they all carried this message of a socially and politically strong mind. From the Renaissance to the best of contemporary art, it's all about, as you said, the manifestoes and our individuality. " (98)


 * What are your yet-unrealized projects?
 * I think it would be to disappear. Nothing could be bigger than that. After a while everybody just wants to disappear. (99)
 * How does this relate to his disappearance/detention in 2011?