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Recently I danced in a video spoof of the song 'Gangnam Style,' and it was quickly banned across multiple Chinese online video platforms. But the story still traveled all over the world, carried in hundreds of international media reports.

Ai Weiwei

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Ai Weiwei
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Architect
Consultant
Contemporary Artist
Designer
Film Director
Human Rights Activist
Painter
Photographer
Sculptor
Social Activist
Peking
Wei-wei Ai
Weiwei Ai
Ai Wei Wei
Stories
Video
Traveled
Stills
Quickly
Recently
Still
International
Multiple
World
Across
Hundreds
Style
Carried
Spoof
Media
Reports
Danced
Story
Online
Banned
Song
Chinese
Platforms

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.
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There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
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I call on people to be 'obsessed citizens,' forever questioning and asking for accountability. That's the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.
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Hopefully, other successes aren't like me. It carries much more meaning to other people my success story is irrelevant. It doesn't make any sense.
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To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.
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We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
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For years, I refused to go to any openings, not even my own.
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Chinese government is very clearly losing power in every aspect, but trying to fix up all the problems or potential problems.
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In an environment without public platform nor protection, the individual is the most powerful and most responsible.
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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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If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?
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In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.
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Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it.
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The whole attitude of society has become much more open and realistic. They realize that the only way to make a more democratic and free society is to let different opinions come out.
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I think optimism is whether you are still exhilarated by life, whether you are curious, whether you still believe there is possibility.
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Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things it is no longer so much about producing something.
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I think everybody deserves freedom. Freedom is such an abstract word, but it's all we need.
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China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities.
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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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[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.
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