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I don't personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.

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
Power
States
Feel
Disgusting
Feels
Association
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Personally
Always
Related
Think
State
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Culture

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I think art is a very important weapon to achieve human freedom
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I'm a free man now, except I cannot leave China. You know, I have no desire to travel. I have so many things to do I cannot finish them now.
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When I first got into the first-year study after the Cultural Revolution, got into the same school with this group, I wasn't conscious of the so-called Fifth Generation. I didn't like that kind of study condition because there's no real, true education there.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don't think there's anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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In the '80s, you couldn't walk in the neighborhood without looking back to see if anyone was following you. You had your key in your hand before you got to your apartment and you'd rush in so you didn't have to stop.
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China partially wants to become part of the world. By hosting the Olympics and the Expo, they made a big effort to tell people: Look, we are the same. They want to be accepted by the international community.
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In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.
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Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.
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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.
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New York was not a romantic city at [80th]. Nobody knows who you are and you don't have to care about anybody else. It's a very cold city, I should say.
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I never had secure, belonging feelings with this society [in China].
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I saw [Allen Ginsberg] more as an old man who liked poetry and who had a lot of physical and emotional problems. We liked our time together.
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[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.
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Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.
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Had I to create a name for these times, I’d say it is the age of craziness
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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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If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?
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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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I remember one little rainy day I went searching for this apartment and I saw so many people standing on a stoop on the corner in the rain. Later I realized, that was drug traffic. They were all buying drugs.
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If I look at it, I would laugh. I don't know how I became successful.
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