Artistry & Incarceration with Ai Weiwei

by Way Way. Ei Way Way is world famous. He is an amazing person involved in civil liberties and human rights and very very very outspoken about in human treatment. I don't want to give a big long introduction because Ai Wei Way himself has so much to say, and I just want to say Hi, Hiwayway, Hello, So nice to see you again. I have been back to China

once since two thousand and fourteen. My two grandchildren, Jude and Truman, are studying and are quite fluent in Mandarin right now, so I took them to China in two thousand and twenty right and we were there in January, right before COVID. The last thing we did in China was to ice skate on the Imperial Palace Lake and they had such a good time. They opened it. That day was like January five. They opened the ice was perfect. We were the first people to ice skate on that

lake and we and I thought of you. I thought of you and wished that you were there. You were not there because you had already I think, left China. Right when did you leave China? Well, I left twos on the fifteen, two thousand twenty, was already in Germany, in Berlin. And I want to get into the nitty gritty of why you had to leave your homeland. I mean, you've had you've had a rough time in that homeland, and yet you have become one of the most famous

Chinese people ever. Had so much happened, and I hope that maybe you could tell us a little bit more about about your time early years in China, when you were your whole family was exiled, and then in two thousand and eleven, I guess when you were put in prison. One of the most famous Chinese people put in prison by the government. And I just want to know why why were you first exiled in the first place with your family? Well, my father was the point. It's the

most one on modern poet for China. His name was I Ching, right, I Chin. His book just published by random House. U you know, I King select boy three and he is one of the revolutionary poet and it was it's the first generation of the Leader's chairman or drawing line. They were in year and struggling and the later they established the new Nation nine in forty nine. So he's uh, he's thinking are quite different or made

the leaders happy. He's not an even anti communist, his communist himself, but he just there's different opinions or the different attitude that is not allowed in in the Communist party. So he was criticized as the rightist and the exiled in the nineteen fifty seven, which is a year I was born. So since I was born, I was with him in the so called re education camp in in

very removed the area in Xinjia. And nobody knows that kind of treatment can last of forever, and nobody knows twenty years we spent time in exile and the condition living conditions is un unspeakable. You know, it's not nothing we have today we can we have that time, you know, we are we're living a dig digaut underground and there's no water almost like uh like animal almost, But we did survive to n one. I had a chance to come to the United States, so I spent about twelve

years in the United States. By nineteen three, I went back to see my father after twelve years havn't seen him. And yeah, then ten really passed very fast. I spent another thirty two years in China until two thousand fifteen. I kind of being forced off after two southly eleven. I was arrested because my online activities basically some kind of criticism with action. So I organize people to investigate the government. It's around doings, which nobody would like something

like that in in any authoritarian society. So I I kind of went too far and they don't like it. They have to find a way to censor my voice under to to smear my action, and to put me in jail behind bars too, you know, just trying to scare people. And yeah, that's basically the story. You spent eighty one days in prison? Can you describe the prison for us? Yes, I spent eighty one days in Sacred detention.

It's not even a prison, it's a location nobody knows where they are, and I was blindforded to take me into that location. And the whole time I was guarded by military police and nobody knows where I just disappeared from the public. My mom doesn't know. I couldn't have a lawyer, and the daily I would go through these kind of interrogations, which mostly a nonsense. You know, it's what they're trying to interrogate from an artists. Only because

I openly criticize them. Did they ask for an apology? They asked me to admit the kind of crime, and I'm really made uh, But I always tell them we need a trial to you know, open trials, so I need a lawyer to to I even need some kind of procedure to recognize the kind of crime they are accusing me. But of course later I realized they just trying to use these kind of tactics to trying to scare me. And also they made the television recording, but

later they didn't use it. It's supposed to popular, uh you know, to to publicize to international television maybe my way of a talk about sens which doesn't really make not qualified. So yeah, they made them some kind of public television recording. What what were the conditions like, did you have a bed to sleep on or were you in a room by yourself? The room is very small

and I just have one bed under one chair. I have to sit down the chair and put my hands on my my my lap and standing sitting there very still a cannomal any action. I would take the first report to them to say I have to go to toilet. Then they have to give me admission for me to do and the two soldiers will walk me into the bathroom, and that they were standing on side of me to watch me to do whatever I have to do in the bathroom, and the twenty four hours will be two soldiers.

They're shifting every hour to watch me. And even when sleep, they're standing right on the side of my bed. The light is always on and they are watching me if I really fall into sleep. Were you ever allowed outside during that eighty one days? No, they are creating a world to make you believe there's nothing outside. The whole universe is that room. And the after a few days,

you would also believe that you're totally cut off. You don't believe the people outside still remembers you, or the question where you are you know there they have very good psychological some kind of special treatment, make you believe you're in their hands and there's no way you can there's no outside. You know, they don't have any kind of physical violence, but mainly it's a psychological vilements because

you have to do everything according to their schedule. And you see, they will say you can't walk now you're walk in the room on six tails and you walk forward and turn, walking back and turn. So you have to do hours of this kind of walking, very much like a military type of walking. And so they would ask you the folding your bed into some kind of perfect cube or take maybe monsters to learn how to to make that just like knife cut shop corners. And

you know it's kind of military ridiculous training. Wow, that is harsh. And what kind of food did they feed you? The food was okay, you know they try the basic The tactics they have is too if their words is to protect you, so protect you to to suicide or protect you to hurt yourself before they make some major decisions. So you are basically highly protect. There's a civilian cameras uh in in several corners of the room under these people in the next room, watching exactly you're every of

your movement, even your eye blinks, they can know. They can blow it up to see what you're trying to do. It's kind of very I would say, unique treatment. The doctor would come in every day to measure your blood pleasure and and you appeals. You have to eat in front of them. You have to open your mouth. They wouldn't look at you swallowen the appeals. You know, they will make sure you did all the procedure. And you didn't know what the pills were, so you just had

to take them anyway you have to take. It is about Otter, and I assume it's something good for you, because they are really scared you're you're going to have some problem. Now. We heard that you were incarcerated because of tax evasion. All kinds of rumors came out of China at that time. We were all so worried for you. You know, so many of us thought about you. People who admit you or just admired your your amazing work, were worried about you, and and we wondered how you

were faring, and we couldn't write to you. Actually, I also worried it's not a worry that I have any kind of crime. I'm worried. It's my kind voice. Many people being sentenced over fifteen thirteen years, that's very normal. I know many people has been put away, So with my activity, I can easily be put away like that, and I would have no chance to really see my son, how he would grow up. He was only two years old.

And the one I was arrested and the interrogator tells me, you know, even when you're released, yourseln never recognized you. Under They're very they're very quite honest. They said, after two years you're finished. You're still will be still alive, but you're not the same person anymore. So we see too many people like that. So I never worried about accusation of my crime. I never did any crime, and

as they also know that. But of course I don't know if anybody would make some kind of voice for me. And later found out a lot of people are supporting me. Of course, so many, so many people supported you, and uh yeah, it's a it's a hard harsh treatment for being an outspoken person in a authoritarian country. That's I mean, it's very very difficult. So many countries in the world are are going in that direction. Now, what do you

think of that? I would think history always uh teachers lessons, I would say, and you know, not obviously right or obviously justice, idea can can be easily achieved. Is always struggle, is always struggle, and that maybe for too long we take the liberty and too easy, and we think liberty can be basal struggle or democracy baslf struggle, which is

not true. I take every generation, every individual, to defending the human dignity and to defending what we believes, and that should be a normal condition, and we for too long we forget about it. You know, it just either everybody to act on that. It was nine eleven in the United States. I was such a happy person up until nine eleven when we suffered the World Trade Center disaster, and and I thought, you know, I've never been afraid in my life, and here we go. I was afraid

for the first time. I had to walk down the streets of New Yorker City that I really loved, and I had to look up every day to make sure nothing was going to happen. And then we had an election of a man who really changed or at least brought to the forefront, a very very fractured America, and we're all thinking, now, gosh, our country is not the same country it was or that we hoped it would be. And so we're living through a lot of what other

countries in the world are living through. I never thought we would see it so clearly, but we are having a very hard time in the United States right now. Do you agree with me that what's going on is really sad and dangerous. I think what we see America, we also have to put in the into the world map, and you seeing the world changed dramatically with the Russian invasion to Ukraine, with China's fast development, and also China has a long strategy trying to make it much more

stronger dominant the world in every aspect. So you'll see American still struggling with many, many, very fundamental issues of a human rights and many many issues seems almost like unsolvable. So the whole political institution of the world is really changing. It's not a likely in the seventies, eighties or nineties we are still living a much peaceful time. Yeah, it's

a it's a very different world. And to me, I do a lot of business in China, we manufacture many many of our products in China, and China has the upper hand. I really admired the growth and the extraordinary innovation of China. But I worry, as you worried, and as you paid dearly for the authoritarian nature of the government. And we're just in a very very strange state right now. And I and this whole thing with the Ukraine, as you mentioned, is just devastatingly sad. And do you see

that there in England too? Do you get the news? Yes, of course we The problem is everything happening in front of us, and we we can get all the informations at the same time. And I want to make us feel powerless, you know, we feel almost like impossible to to do something to help the situation. But still we have to understand all the power has to come back to individuals and the world doesn't matter where it goes.

I have to benefit each individual and so so I take the individual too to act, and the two to tell people how do you think and and clearly and also to honestly reflects those feelings it is your expression, and to communicate, so to make sure they are really very responsibility for whatever happens in the world your exhibits that you have created, so many amazing, amazing exhibits. So, for example, your sunflower seeds. I have my fourteen seeds that you gave me either way way, can you hear them?

These are your seeds that you gave me from I. Of course I still have them there, my precious seeds. I think about you when I look at them, each seed hand crafted out of porcelain and hand painted by How many people did it take to make a hundred million of these porcelain seeds? It picked up all the one souls and six hundred people working for seven hundred days, wow, to make all the and and how much did they weigh when you finally finished making a hundred million seeds?

What did that pile of seeds weigh? What? It's about a hundred fifty tents tons? Oh my gosh. So so a ton of everybody is two thousand pounds. That's a big pile of porcelain. And you exhibited them first at the Tate Gallery in London. Yes, and the show be in the Turban Hall in Pig Gallery. I read that you were in the Originally I saw it, but I didn't walk in it. I think it was closed off to walking when I finally got to see it, but

people were allowed originally to walk on the seeds. What was your message, Well, I want to make something very small. It looks quite fragile, and but it takes a complicated message to make it, to like make the highest porcelain pieces and take about twenty different procedures to to really make one. But everything handmade. It looked exactly the same, but none of them can can be identical lead to another. It's not the same because they all hand depended by once,

all six hundred women, day by day. And you know, so that is uh fascinating, and I think, and it looks like an ocean, but none none of those pieces are the same. Incredible, So that's an exhibit. Then you did the Forever Bicycles another exhibit in two thousand and seventeen. Tell us about what the what the twelve D twelve D bicycles or hundred bicycles. There are several times being exhibited from maybe twelve hundred to five thousand. You know,

this is several version. I went to the exhibit. I have a picture here of me at the Hershorn Museum in Washington that was Yeah, that was two thousand and thirteen. That was a beautiful exhibit though, thank you. And so what was the message for the bicycles, Well, bicycle is something awful everyday objects has already made one. We grew up.

We see bicycles as very luxuries. If you can't have a bicycle the time I was working in the field, you have to walk very far away in the desert, and you know it's not possible to to you know, scorby desert. You don't have drop over water and there's no no trees, so it's no shadow you under the sound. So we always dream to a fault bike. And then your river crabs thirty two hundred little porcelain red crabs,

reddish and orangesh crabs. What was that about. Well, river crabs in Chinese have the same name with the color hormonoous society. Yeah, that means the government sink that society has to be unified or peaceful. You know, it's kind of propaganda. And so it's kind of pond because it sounded the same chis it means the same. So I used that as some kind of irony or two as a humor, and everybody online in China understand what I'm

talking about. And then you did the chairs in two thousand and eleven, a thousand and one beautiful, beautiful um Chinese antique chairs. What was that about. That's about the chairs and the chairs is uh as part of our tradition. Chairs is not as functional as some kind of furniture, but the rather reflections of Chinese understanding of our society about family, about this kind of moral or ritual aspect. So but in the modern days, all those a disappeared,

destroyed people only have a plastic chairs. They you can buy a plastic chair in exchange for the antique chairs because antipachers that they're always losing our shaking and it doesn't look like flashy and but a plastic chair looks much better. So so you know, the whole society had changed. The values, the judgment and the tradition disappeared. So that's why I collects antiques and to try and to learn

from those uh, those older objects or elements. I had a I have a good friend literally may Pay, who lives here in the United States. She comes from Western China, UM and she told me a lot about the struction of the antiquities during the revolution and how sad it was. And so she when there's a garage sale or or an estate sale, she goes to find old Chinese things to buy because she values them so much she remembers

them from her childhood. And then everything sort of disappeared and became the plastic chair, and she really admires the old workmanship and the old and they and they value. So is does that have something to do with all of that? Oh? Yes, we are. We are being cut about from our own memory, you know, tradition. It's about part of our memory, about our identity to a center where they come from. And that that is probably the

worst condition. While I'm being cut off format your memory, so you'll get lost who you are and you don't know where you come from. So too for me, that's a struggle to to leave on the memory under to be too to discover or memories. So do you think a lot of people who have left China read Chinese history and try to reassimilate their whole background into the real history. Well, it's it's extremely difficult because the history always been rewriting by the modern time, and the China

basins is kind of highly as Subtorian society. A censorshipe under under changes that the lines and tombs in the history, so it's very hard to get a real, so called honest or or special view about what happened in the past. Is there any history book way way that you could recommend in English for our listeners to read that you think does depict the history in a in an accurate fashion.

There's a Every history writer have their own perspective, but it's always nice to to say that perspective are very clear and also it's some kind of historical record or proof. So recently I'm reading a book called The Silk Road, which is by British and American writer Robert and the Silk Road as a a very interesting writing in in re talk about the world history from different perspective. Silk Road. So everyone look up the book Silk Road and take

take away ways recommendation. What about the zodiac heads? When I saw those zodiac heads in New York around the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, I was just entranced. What's the history of that of those particular fantastic zodiac heads that have animals representing the twelve months. Well, those animal has zodiacs. I was seeing Ching dynasty in the in the palace of the King Emperor till French and

British soldiers looted them and a since then disappeared. But in the recent years about seven of the twelve great really appeared in the market. So Chinese government encourage people to buying it back to us. Uh, some kind of patriotic act, which is a questionable because those rudias are made for Manchu people. Who is in inventor of China is not the invader or of China, so I think

that is quite ironic. I made I fixed the one who is never been found, which are five of them, so combined with the other sevens as we have a complete zodiac cat So first time I it's been showing in the a little fountain in front of Plaza Plaza hotel. Right that time I am still in the in the detention, so I completely have no idea those it's going to be showing, and uh, yeah, it's being showed under the Mayor Broomberg also give open pulp about me and about

the work, which I think is quitey impressive. It was wonderful, wonderful Mayor Bloomberg did an incredible job of of letting us see your work firsthand. It was amazing. And those are ten foot tall? Where are they now? Where? How many sets did you make? They are? One set of them is seeing Lacoma in the Los Angeles Museum. They permanently collect that, so anybody wants see it, they should go to LACMA in Los Angeles. And uh, I still

have more exhibits that. I'm so interested in the Olympic Stadium in two thousand and eight, the Bird's Nest, which I went to see when it was still under construction, and you collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog and demoron. What was that collaboration like And was the conception of a bird's nest? What? What's the idea there? Well, it's uh, they hurst them around. They teamed with me because they know not much about Tiness culture and they know I'm

very interesting architecture and the art. So they come out this uh concept for the competition. Under they win the competition, then the whole architecture Burnest is trying to reflect this kind of openness and the bondness about the modern society. And of course, uh, you know later being used for different other purpose. You know, it become a strong propaganda element for the party. But our decline for the architecture, I think it's very very strong and very beautiful. It is.

It is such a beautiful stadium. Did and it worked very well too. Yes, and now you're doing documentaries. A documentary was just was just shown at a festival in England. Is that true yours truly? There's a documentary about my art projects, your truth yours truly showing in this musical festival in England. Yes, the film is about the show. In a contrast, it's about how to write postcard to

those political prisoners all over the world. Hundred seventies six of them, and of course some of them are already released on most of them are still in jail. Wow, so we we know how many of there are are? Do you think there are more than that? There's a hundred times that we don't know there only know some noticeable one. Most of them not will be forgotten or never would come to the public attention. Are you working on a on a new work now that we should

be anticipating. Uh, well, I'm artists, you know, I am a self employed I always work. I don't have vacation. But yeah, but there's nothing I have to do. It's just it's just some kind of self motivation or you know, well, you you work in such big numbers for many of your exhibits. Is there is there something that you're collecting now or or creating now that have you been commissioned by another museum somewhere that we should we should know about.

They are not announced, so I cannot announced it. But yes, there's always had me. Well, we're always looking forward to um anything that I way way does, and we're just so proud of to know you and so so happy that you are obviously thriving living in a community where you can not only teach and influence but also survive. Do you have any hopes of ever going back to China? Yes, every day I want to go back, but still we

have to wait when the situation become more clear. You know, I kind as my country and I care about it and know so many and nice sense happening in China. But of course, uh, I don't want to be putting in some kind of disappeared Again, that's not a very good solution for that. Is your studio still there? The one I visited. I have a student in painting. Yes, we had also read that a studio of yours in in Shanghai or somewhere else was destroyed. Is that true not?

It's true in Shanghai and also invaging part of my studio destroyed. But that's why our normal kind of destroys many since and they also reviewed the many sense, so you know it's for something in China is not a big deal. I It's just so incredible what you have done and what you have taught us. And I'm just so pleased to have major acquaintance several times and to be able to talk to you so intensely about what's going on with you. You know, we have a lot

of similarities. Food is one. Of course, you cooked me lunch twice and I I still owe you lunch at my house to eat from my garden. And I hope someday you come to the United States and have lunch here at my farm because I would love to do that. You also love cats as much as I do. Do you have any cats there in Cambridge? Have a too cast in Cambridge and I'll have a new location you in discipline in their Apple eight pass. And then we

also have prison in common. I hate to bring up my prison because it was like it was like a going away to a children's camp compared to what you had to go through. But incarceration is hideous, enforced incarce incarceration, And I just want to say that that you have survived your your tormentors very very well ey way Way, and I'm very proud of you. It's a horrible thing

to be incarcerated. And America has to revisit their penis is them as so many countries have to, because it's just sometimes and many times a very unfair way to treat humans. And you're an artist, and I think I'm an artist, and you're outspoken, and I think I'm outspoken. I'm not outspoken enough, but someday I'll be able to be a little bit more outspoken, I hope. But you have You are brave and courageous and uh and really admirable.

Thank you so much for speaking with me today and um and I hope we get to meet again sometime in the near future, and good luck with all your new work. I hope that I'll come to see you and there it will be the best reason to come to New York, thank you,