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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
Realized
Became
Products
Attitude
Artist
Symbolic
Thing
Producing
Like
Lifestyle
Product

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Selling high or low doesn't mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.
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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.
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I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.
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Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
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I don't think there is a distinct change, because in the West I'm not a person who can serve his purpose.
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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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My childhood was quite extreme. Sometimes I was so weak I could not stand up. But now I am so strong. Life is unpredictable
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If I really have nothing to do, I just watch my cats, take some photos, and go back to my personal blog.
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Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.
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The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum. A few thousand are to be built in the next few years, all using taxpayer money. But there is no system, no research, no content, no good programs, no good managers.
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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.
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What counts in the end is what the government does.
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China didn't want to lose the cutting edge of technology. So the idea of having a Sina Weibo was an attempt to compete with Twitter. However, it has no soul - which is freedom of expression. Nevertheless, I think the government regrets having Sina Weibo, but they cannot shut it down. That would definitely be suicidal.
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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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Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind. A fairy tale has come true.
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If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
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Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China's society is opening.
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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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We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It's very materialistic. It's full of desire and luxury goods.
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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.
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