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It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.

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
Products
Attitude
Artist
Symbolic
Thing
Producing
Like
Lifestyle
Product
Realized
Became

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.
Ai Weiwei
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Otherwise, I think the building can be bigger, larger, and the city can be much more crazy. The problem is the government structure is so deadly stupid, not really solving problems but creating a lot of problems itself every day.
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I think Allen [Ginsberg] was a person who's like a child.
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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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Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.
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My image of what a city should be - the super-rich and all the poor and desperate and the people who have some kind of a desire. It's a surviving game, people trying to survive on many different levels.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't belong to a working system. They only select people if you belong to one so you can be controlled.
Ai Weiwei
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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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I don't believe in the so-called Olympic spirit. I speak from personal experience. When China hosted the Games, it failed to include the people. The event was constructed without regard for their joy.
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I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we'll have competition. And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would've lost the ground to win.
Ai Weiwei
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For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political. You don't have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.
Ai Weiwei
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Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
Ai Weiwei
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Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
Ai Weiwei
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A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.
Ai Weiwei
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After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.
Ai Weiwei
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Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
Ai Weiwei
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There's no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
Ai Weiwei
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I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it's very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.
Ai Weiwei
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I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust.
Ai Weiwei
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[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.
Ai Weiwei