Ai Weiwei
Leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator and activist.
"I think China is in a chaos now and it could be more chaos. It’s an orderly chaos. It’s a party that ruthlessly violates every human’s basic rights to serve its own purpose."
"Citizens should bear the responsibility to act."
"This simple form of repression, of using the method of not letting anyone speak, will never succeed."
"House arrest, travel restrictions, surveillance, stopping phone service, cutting the Internet connection. What we can still do is greet the crazy motherland once again."
"What does it matter if China’s economy grows when there are no basic protections for its citizens?"
"Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can’t even imagine that they’ll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they’ve never seen electricity or toilet paper."
"Before blogging, I was living in the Middle Ages. Now my feelings for time and space are entirely different."
"You need [to make] something people can realize is art. Otherwise they think you are too political. Sometimes you have to say: 'Oh, I am an artist, you know. I can do this.'"
"I think we have too much history. It’s not so important. I think people should have fun and enjoy their own time. I haven’t done much, so why should I waste people’s memory?"
"The Internet changes the structure of society all the time—this massiveness made of individuals."
"I’ve never planned any part of my career—except being an artist. And I was pushed into that corner because I thought being an artist was the only way to have a little freedom."
"Cover-ups and deception are the nature of this society. Without lies it won’t exist."
"Not an inch of the land belongs to you, but every inch could easily imprison you."
"The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that."
"[My family] suffer so much. My mother was much older when I came out [of detention]. She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me. When you make somebody disappear and you don’t announce it to the family, what is this? You make people desperate and bring them close to death. If our cat or dog is lost, it makes us desperately want to know where it is—so for humans disappearing, you can barely imagine the pain. What kind of society is this? If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection, then? That’s why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or so charming. People feel, This guy is fighting for us."
"The worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system. Without trust, you cannot identify anything; it’s like a sandstorm. You don’t see yourself as part of the city—there are no places that you relate to, that you love to go. You have no memory of any material, texture, shape. Everything is constantly changing, according to somebody else’s will, somebody else’s power."
"The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility, afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer, or even of making mistakes."
"Liberty is about our rights to question everything."
"I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did."
"The 81 days of detention were a nightmare. I am not unique; it happened to many people in China. Conditions were extreme, created by a system that thinks it is above the law and has become a kind of monstrous machine. There were so many moments when I felt desperate and hopeless. But still, the next morning, I heard the birds singing."