A Conversation Ai Weiwei, Ethan Cohen Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 83, Number 1, Spring 2016, pp. 155-163 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/620877 Accessed 27 Apr 2018 18:03 GMT
Ai Weiwei and Ethan Cohen A Conversation The following remarks are edited from a transcript of video created by Ai Weiwei and Ethan Cohen for the Fear of Art conference at The New School and shown on Thursday, February 12, 2015. The video was produced by Ethan Cohen of the Ethan Cohen Gallery, New York, on behalf of The New School. The video, and the discussion that followed, are available online at http://tinyurl.com/socresai-wei-wei. Ai Weiwei: Hello, my name is Ai Weiwei. I m very happy I can be part of the thirty-second Social Research conference. I m a Chinese artist living in Beijing. My condition has been constantly interrupted or disturbed by political pressure. My practice of art has been under surveillance, and all of my contacts and phone calls and emails have been under the secret police s watch. Currently I don t have the right to travel and I don t have my passport. I don t have a chance to show my work in Beijing. My name cannot appear in social media [or] the Chinese Internet, and no one can discuss my art in the newspapers or magazines, even to criticize me. It s as if I m a person who does not exist in this society. Ethan Cohen: Is your art censored in China because of your political position or because of the nature of the art itself? AW: I think my art is censored because of my political position [and] also because of my artworks, which have a very different understanding of the nature of art. My art has been involved with social practice, social research Vol. 83 : No. 1 : Spring 2016 155
and also trying to bring out the consciousness of the society related to social justice and foreigners. But of course it s not only about that; it s about individuality, it s about personal freedom, and it s about freedom of expression, and all those qualities being considered as a political attitude or political principles that are not allowed in this kind of society I would call it a totalitarian society, which is scared of this kind of practice. It doesn t start with me. If we look at the history of China before 1949, before the [current regime] got into power, the government already started to have a very strong opinion on art. In 1942, Yan an, which was a Communist movement, before they took power, already had very clear principles about what art should be and what should not be allowed in art practice. In principle, every work in China has to be part of the Communist struggle, which means it has to do this under the precise measurement or censorship of the Party, and it has to work for the Party. Or, normally they say work for the people, but of course the people s rights are not actually involved; their rights are represented by the party. So that means every work is censored. And the Communists had a very clear idea; they said they gain the power by the gun and maintain stability by the pen that means writing and art and self-expression and the media are always being censored or controlled. They understand that only by doing so can they maintain the stability of the society. EC: When did the government begin to really attack you, to clamp down on you and your art practice, giving you a hard time? When was that key moment, and why? AW: My experience with the government censorship or very harsh treatment [goes back] long before my [own] practice. My father was a poet, he was exiled for 20 years without a possibility to write. And after I came back from the United States, I was there from 1989 to 1993, I didn t even want to practice art because of the censorship. However, I have been making underground books, we call them gray cover 156 social research
books or white cover books, and they re trying to promote underground culture because there is no other space in which to discuss contemporary [issues]. In 2000 we [mounted] a show in Shanghai I thought it would be safer because I lived in Beijing, and Shanghai has less experience with contemporary art. The show was called Fuck Off, and it was shut down a few days after opening. By 2005 I [was able to get] on the Internet. I have been, I feel, extremely lucky. I was the first, one of a few artists if not the only one, who got very involved with the Internet. And by 2008 there was an earthquake and then China hosted the Olympics. I became very active on the Internet with both of my artworks [related to] the death toll from the Sichuan earthquake, which brought me into crucial confrontations with the police. Of course, the state didn t want that information to be revealed. As artists we think the very essential facts or truths are the basis of our expression, and as an artist I think I can find a form to really extend that belief. So [we worked] on the Internet and motivated volunteers, and we went to the Sichuan earthquake area to research and make documentary films. We found out about over 5,000 students who died in the earthquake. So that was the first moment I was on the front line of confronting the state lie. Every day I would post on my Sina.com blog the names we found that day, and a hundred thousand people would watch my act and repost my findings of those students. So that made the authority take a decision to shut down my blog. Then my lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, also the lawyer for the human rights activist Tan Zuoren and was defending him in a court in Sichuan, asked, Weiwei, can you come help [as] a court witness to support this person? So we went to Sichuan, and that night, the police broke into the hotel and beat me. That incident caused my head to have a hemorrhage. I had an operation in Munich in 2009, in the autumn. Without that surgery, I m not going to be here. So I already died and that even put me in a much stronger [position for] confrontation and argument. A Conversation 157
EC: Don t you think that in the future there will be many Ai Weiweis as the society becomes more educated? How can they repress you, Ai Weiwei? How can they repress the hundreds of thousands of educated Chinese scholars, businesspeople, lawyers, educated medical doctors? People this is as you say a civil society Chinese have been studying abroad and they are coming back to this society. Don t they want the same sort of freedom of expression that they ve experienced elsewhere? AW: Of course today, with globalization and the Internet and with very broad communication between China and the West, the kind of control they are trying to maintain is extremely difficult. Every year there are 500,000 people who study abroad in the United States and Europe. Besides knowledge, they bring back understanding of modern society, culture, and art. And all of them know me. I would every day walk on the street, or shopping mall, or restaurant, and the young people would come and ask me to take a photo, shake hands, or say how much they understand my condition. Then you see on one hand the state [exerting] extreme control, but on the hand there is a notion of freedom that is stronger than ever. And I think this kind of demand for social justice and the demand for individual freedom is going to be strong. EC: Your solo exhibition has been traveling the world. Your piece of rebar the installation of the pieces of rebar that were totally screwed up in the earthquake. You made them perfect again. Do you think the Chinese government understands the meaning of your art? The people in the West understand, and it s very poetic, but at the same time it s damaging the soft power, the prestige, showing there is corruption, or showing the Chinese government is trying to push it under the rug. Your work is bringing to light what s really happening. Doesn t the government understand this? 158 social research
AW: I think this government doesn t understand art. They only understand a kind of propaganda, a kind of art that carries a very purified or single message. What they re afraid of is art having different levels of meaning, or even unclear or indescribable conditions, which they would consider [potentially] dangerous. If something could be considered a threat to society, then the censorship exists. So censorship exists not only in the principle of state authority but in all institutions [which must] submit their artworks before a show to the authority. Even [these rules are] not very precisely applied, but every institution understands. This can really become a threat to their existence because authority can always step in to say you have to shut down the show. They would never give you a clear reason. They would only say this piece cannot be shown, or they would only [give] some other reason, like a fire code, or [they would] even just unplug the electricity. Today they re much less harsh, but there are culture police. Also there are institutions that play a kind of game they would delete names or take down paintings or hide the message in their announcements. These are very common [strategies] in China with almost every art show. EC: Can you give us a few concrete examples of what you re describing? I think you have personally experienced and encountered some problems. AW: In the past few months [there have been] two examples. I was included in a show in Shanghai [at] the big Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum, owned by the Shanghai government. The show [celebrated 15 years of the China Contemporary Art Award.] I happened [to serve on the juries] for the first three awards so, in that show they had to use my name. Twenty minutes before the show, the police came and asked the museum to [remove] my name from the wall... They had almost no time to do it, so they had to reprint the whole wallpaper and use a hairdryer to really to dry the wall because in twenty minutes all the people would come in. During the opening, A Conversation 159
Uli Sigg [the founder of the China Contemporary Art Award and an organizer of the exhibition ed.], was very angry, and he stood up to say this was not acceptable. Of course he speaks perfect English. His translator didn t even translate that sentence. [All of the] so-called best Chinese artists know me I [even] selected most of them as the best artists. But none of them, not even one artist, [said,] hey, this is a historical fact. Can we respect that? So no question has ever been asked and all artists think nothing ever happened. About one or two months later, the Ullens Center [for Contemporary Art] in Beijing, Philip Tinari is the art director, put up a show to memorialize my colleague from China Art Archives and Warehouse, Hans van Dijk. He s my colleague. a Westerner who promoted contemporary art [in China], but he passed away, so the show was dedicated to him and to our early practice. The China Art Archives and Warehouse is the foundation created by me and Hans van Dijk and Frank Uytterhaegen, one of the first contemporary art galleries. We did many things and we promoted lots of young artists in the 1990s. I didn t even get the invitation for that show, and when I realized that, somebody showed me the invitation with all artist names but my name was not in there. You know, my name is started with A, which always appears at the beginning, but their name list started with C. I was very surprised. I was not surprised about censorship but I was surprised about this kind of self-censorship. They [said], This is part of the history, and we re not talking about Ai Weiwei at all, but we have to mention the historical fact. And also they didn t mention the fact that Hans van Dijk had this institution with me; they said with someone. So I became someone. So I said, okay, I have to remove my work from the show. That was a very strong case of selfcensorship. Later I asked the police why my name cannot appear on this show. The police said, You know, Weiwei, we will never censor a foreign institution like that. It s themselves. You should sue them. That s a very solid answer from the secret police, even. 160 social research
EC: Tell us why the government is preventing you from leaving China. Why aren t they giving you your passport? What s the story? What s happening? AW: I was arrested in 2011 not for too long, just 81 days, but I completely disappeared. Not my mom, not my lawyer, not the whole society knew where I was. I was put in a secret location. And even I myself didn t know where I was because I was put in a black hood and driven into nowhere, to a location where I was held for 24 hours, and military police were present. Even during my sleep there were two police standing right in front of my bed. Even when I was taking a shower they had to stand so close that their uniforms were wet. After my release, of course my passport had been taken, and they [repeatedly] promise me they will return it without any tricks. You know, I never do get my passport, but they still promise me they will give back to me. So. it has been four years but I think that is ok. [Ai Weiwei s passport was returned to him on April 22, 2015. ed.] I have much less freedom but still I can work, and still my condition [gives me] a unique position and pressure, and makes my fight or my argument or my expression have a very solid reality. I [could not have created] it by myself. It took a state, a powerful state, to do it. So I am kind of amused by the condition. All I have to ask is, why me? Why not somebody else? I think because I ve been through so much, like my father s generation. During the 1957 Anti-Rightist campaign, 550,000 intellectuals were vanished. And, of course, during the later Cultural Revolution and all those political movements, so many intellectuals were crushed. Almost no single one who had his own voice could avoid being punished. [I also had the] privilege of having been in the United States, New York, for 12 years, to [gain an] understanding [of] how contemporary art or contemporary culture relates to our contemporary life. So that gave me a strong influence or state of mind to become an artist today in fighting for very essential rights. Fighting for freedom of expression. I never thought that was just for me. I think that is for the condition of all artists and all A Conversation 161
human beings. This is the most precious right, to be ourselves and to announce ourselves as individuals, and that is best part of life. So I will never feel regret or feel sorry for the situation I m in. EC: Your art, though, following your detention and your experience you say you grew up seeing your family persecuted because of your father s intellectual mishaps how has your art personally changed since your detention? Since those 81 days not knowing if you were going to be freed? I remember you telling me you weren t sure you d see your child again, your wife, your family, friends. The whole world was worried about you. How has that affected your art? Has it changed your actual artistic practice? AW: After my release from my detention I start to realize my voice had gained so much support not only from China but also internationally, from so many artists, institutions, and intellectuals, and ordinary people from New York, Europe, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. What their support is about is freedom of speech. And in China, after the Chinese government forcefully put a tax punishment on my company, they saw, in 10 days, 30,000 people donate over 9 million Chinese Yuan to us in supporting us to make a fight, to bring them to the court. When I was in detention, I really felt because they told me I may be sentenced for over 13 or 15 years so what I felt sorry [about] is maybe I didn t give my son a chance to make him understand who I am. So since I came out, I always want to ask myself if my art or my works can tell my son or the younger generation who I am, what kind of life I ve been through, and why freedom of speech is so precious. EC: The theme of this conference is Fear of Art. Your project in Alcatraz that brought awareness, so much more awareness, to all those artists and intellectuals who are incarcerated those governments holding those individuals, are they fearing your art practice? 162 social research
AW: I think, all the authorities, why are they afraid of art? Because art can clearly, can very sensitively make sense to everybody. Can speak of the truth so clearly. And can make complicated issues very simple and innocent, and that can be so powerful. That can destroy this kind of corrupted structure. So I think, being artists, we have a responsibility to make those very essential principles attractive, sexy, and understandable, and I think that is why I still can call myself as artist. A Conversation 163