On Interviewing Ai Weiwei Ethan Cohen Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 83, Number 1, Spring 2016, pp. 169-174 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/620879 No institutional affiliation (16 Oct 2018 22:41 GMT)
Ethan Cohen On Interviewing Ai Weiwei i have known ai weiwei since 1986. he is a brilliant humanitarian. What I learned from interviewing him was his complete commitment to freedom of expression and being true to himself. Truth is the essence of who he is, and art speaks the truth. He has grown up to see his family persecuted for ridiculous, trumped-up charges. In fact, when I asked him the question, When did the government start giving you a hard time, it wasn t 2008 it was when he was a child. He lived in complete penury because his father was an intellectual, and his father s poems went a little to the right, a little to the left, and Mao didn t like it. Mao exiled him to Xinjiang, and Weiwei spent the beginning of his life in a dirt hut with his brothers and sisters. Ai Weiwei is not afraid. I think one of the questions I was asking him, when he was let out of jail after 81 days was, How can you go on? Aren t you afraid of the government clamping down on you even more? I think the 81 days have given him such power that he s not afraid of anyone or any institution. He wants to speak the truth. It is important to remember that Ai Weiwei is a human being who happens to be Chinese, living in Beijing, but he is also a Chinese citizen. He is a patriot. He believes in the rule of law, a Chinese civil society. He believes that the government has a legal system that represents him and every other Chinese citizen. If you do wrong, or if someone has wronged you, you can go to the government, you can petition, and you can have your day in court. It may not be perfect today, but there is a system in China. We hope that, slowly but surely, China will evolve as it becomes more powerful in the world economy. social research Vol. 83 : No. 1 : Spring 2016 169
Study of Perspective (White House, Washington, DC, USA). Photo by Ai Weiwei. 1995. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio. Study of Perspective (Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China). Photo by Ai Weiwei. 1995. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio. 170 social research
The Chinese leadership believes in soft power. They have to open up somehow. One of the questions I posed to Ai Weiwei was, Aren t there hundreds of thousands of other Ai Weiweis out there? And is it a time bomb? But I think that art speaks the truth. Weiwei is one of those people, and he s not the only Chinese artist dissident who has been censored, for example the Gao brothers and others. It is interesting that Weiwei now has the right to produce art in China freely. He may not be able to leave and come to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington to see his exhibition because he doesn t have his passport yet. 1 We hope that the Chinese government will soften and give him a passport soon. Ai Weiwei doesn t just doesn t want to leave China; he wants to leave China with dignity. He wants to leave China and be able to come back to China, because he is a Chinese citizen. I d like to add one thing that Weiwei would want to make sure all of you who are reading this now are aware of: know you matter, and you are important to him, and you are important to the world. Just as Weiwei has very poetically been a spokesman for all those individuals around the world who have been incarcerated because of their beliefs, I would encourage you, number one, to visit Alcatraz. If you haven t seen Weiwei s Alcatraz exhibition in person, at least visit it online, because it s beautiful and it s powerful. When you enter Alcatraz 2 and see the huge bathhouse that must contain 15,000 square feet of images of individuals incarcerated because of their beliefs as Weiwei has been, he informs you that you can see who these people are and that they matter. He has a project where you can send those individuals a postcard. Having been incarcerated for 81 days he knows how lonely it is and wants to put pressure internationally on all the governments holding those individuals. If the governments are not going to deliver those postcards to the incarcerated individuals, at least the world is putting pressure on the governments to release those individuals. If the individuals do receive the postcards, they will know someone cares about them. This is so important. I think this is where an artist can really play a significant role internationally On Interviewing Ai Weiwei 171
Cross: It s the Way (Self-portrait). Photo by Ai Weiwei. 1987. Courtesy of Ethan Cohen Fine Arts and Ai Weiwei. 172 social research
politically, socially, and artistically. This is why Ai Weiwei makes art: because he can provoke us all to think more deeply. notes 1. On July 22, 2015, Ai Weiwei s passport was returned to him. Ed. 2. To accompany Ai Weiwei s installation at Alcatraz, @Large (http:// www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/), he created a series of postcards and an accompanying booklet. The postcards show images of flowers, nature, wildlife, and each postcard is associated with an imprisoned dissident or activist. At his exhibit in Alcatraz, Ai Weiwei invited visitors to write a postcard to one of these endangered activists to let them know that they are not alone, that we care about what is happening to them. Ed. On Interviewing Ai Weiwei 173
Safe Sex. Photo by Ai Weiwei. 1986. Courtesy of Ethan Cohen Fine Arts and Ai Weiwei. 174 social research