Ай Вэйвэй цитаты

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„Я постоянно фотографирую. В мире происходит великое множество вещей, которые стоят того, чтобы взглянуть на них дважды.“

„Настоящее искусство рождается в повседневности.“

„Поиск свободы — это основа человеческой природы.“

„Мне кажется порочной идея Олимпиады. Измерять национальный престиж золотыми медалями — это как измерять мужскую потенцию количеством выпитой виагры.“

„В Китае есть подразделение — кажется, оно называется, «Управление 608», — сотрудники которого следят за людьми самых разных категорий. Я для них важная цель. Они не просто прослушивают мой телефон, проверяют почту и устанавливают камеры везде, где я регулярно появляюсь, — они следуют за мной, даже если я гуляю с сыном в парке.“

„Всё на свете искусство и всё на свете политика.“

„Вчитайтесь в историю любого героя: герой не станет героем, пока не появится монстр.“

„В китайском языке 140 знаков хватит и для того, чтобы соблазнить девушку, и для того, чтобы написать Конституцию.“

„Тоталитарное общество способно создать все, что угодно — кроме страсти и воображения.“

„В Китае все устроено так, что если никто не говорит «нет», это можно воспринимать как «да». Но нет никакой гарантии, что это «да» кто-то одобрил.“

„Из всех уличных видов спорта самый лучший — это швыряние камней в зазнавшуюся власть.“

„Моя страна напоминает мне бегуна, который показывает рекордную скорость, но у которого застарелые проблемы с сердцем.“

“In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. Just take the example from yesterday: I had given a telephone interview to CNN. Then, suddenly, CNN was shut down for a couple of minutes. It was the first time I experienced that my television went totally dead. I realized: Oh my God, it’s because of me. This is crazy! Which nation would do that? Maybe Cuba, North Korea, China. But what do they want, what are they so afraid of?”

“The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people.”

“The Olympics are an opportunity to redefine the country, but the message is always wrong.”

“This is a decadent era. Its main characteristic is that it’s dependent on lies and cheating. Once it loses this characteristic, it can’t survive for even a day.”

“People often say I started to become too outspoken after a certain period. It’s all because of the Internet. If we didn’t have this technology I would be same as everybody else. I couldn’t really amplify my voice.”

“The frustration mainly comes from trying to understand what they really want. Also, you cannot understand how can such a large nation maintain its so-called stability by doing something very unlawful. I mean, how can they possibly manage to stabilize the whole social condition by not [acting with] justice and fairness.”

“When the mayor of Nagoya denies the Nanjing Massacre, he gets blacklisted by the city of Nanjing. When the government of Sichuan denies “tofu dregs” construction [which caused the collapse of several schools], they get blacklisted by me.”

“In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want—not only you, your whole family and all people like you.”

“Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.”

“I call on people to be “obsessed citizens,” forever questioning and asking for accountability. That’s the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.”

“If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.”

“No outdoor sports can be more elegant than throwing stones at autocracy; no melees can be more exciting than those in cyberspace.”

“I think right now is the moment. This is the beginning. We don’t know what is it the moment of, and maybe something much crazier will happen. But really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment.”

“This does not mean a meteor has fallen. This is the discovery of a star.”

“Before blogging, I was living in the Middle Ages. Now my feelings for time and space are entirely different.”

“I often think what I’m saying is for the people who never had a chance to be heard.”

“I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations.”

“I don’t really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What’s life if you don’t have conversation and joy and anger?”

“The population is in a constant state of enforced dislocation. So let us hope that a totally new culture will come out of this.”

“Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don’t have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life.”

“The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.”

“If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it’s a human need.”

“Block [my blog] if you want, but I cannot self-censor, because that is the only reason I have the blog. We both know this is a game. You have to play your part, and I have to play mine.”

“I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.”

“You know, if they can do this to me they can do this to anybody, and they have been doing this for over sixty years.... it’s a very strange world.”

“The 2008 Olympics has created an illusion of China to the public and to the outside world. It is so fantastic, so unreal, that the entire meaning of the games is being distorted.”

“I try to encourage people to look at our past in a critical way because as our education, we have a great, great history. But in reality we are poorest in ethics and philosophy, so I try to raise people’s consciousness on how we deal with our past.”

“In talking about memory and our history, I think our humanity, especially in China, is cut. Cut, broken, separated. If we have a character from our history and memory, the character is broken, it’s shattered.”

“The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China.”