Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Let's start.

We have a lot of dogs and cats.

Out of the 40 cats,

one knows how to open doors.

Where did this intelligence come from?

All the other cats watch us open the door.

So I was thinking, if I had never

met this cat that can open doors,

I wouldn't know

that cats could open doors.

The biggest difference

between people and cats

is that cats will open the door,

but they will never close it behind them.

Oh, it's right here.

I was looking for this hat.

Here we call it

being an artist within the system.

But he's not. He's...

just himself, you know.

It's too cold in here.

But the light in this room is great.

- Don't you want to connect them?

- Not yet.

I'm getting ready for two shows right now.

One is for the autumn show

at Tate Nodern in London.

The other is for the So Paulo Biennale.

At this point, my head is empty.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

I've been asking everyone around me

for good ideas.

Actually, I have very little involvement

in the production of my works.

I mainly make the decisions.

I prefer to have other people

implement my ideas.

Or maybe I just have an idea,

and someone else can use it.

I'm just his hands.

I'm like an assassin.

He says to me, "Here's some money.

Go and kill this person."

I wouldn't ask him,

"Why do you want him killed?"

That's silly.

You just get it done!

We're just hired assassins.

When I eat,

there isn't enough for the rest of you!

He's OK just eating buns.

He always feels art is not a big deal.

He may say, "What the hell is art?"

I think that his role here...

has surpassed that of an artist alone.

Describe yourself.

I consider myself...

more of a...

more of a chess player.

Ny opponent makes a move,

I make a move.

Now I'm waiting for my opponent

to make the next move.

Every year I do more than 1 00 interviews with the

international press.

Same goes for Chinese media.

Chinese critics are

typically mild but skilful.

They don't directly criticise

the Communist Party or the government.

But Ai Weiwei is different.

He uses the most aggressive words

to point out societys dark side.

Hello?

Are you the Sichuan Post-Quake Reconstruction office?

Yes.

We want to know more details

about the student death toll.

The death toll is confidential.

What do you want this name list for?

Are you some kind of American spy?

At the time, I was at home

taking care of my child.

I was always reading

Ai Weiwei's blog on Sina.com.

That was before it got shut down.

A lot of people were reading it.

One day I saw an entry he wrote

about investigating the student deaths

from the May 12th quake.

He said he was seeking volunteers

to help him do this work.

How many casualties were there?

About 94.

The volunteers went to every town

to ask parents and schools

for the names of the dead.

You couldn't even call it tofu construction,

it's the dregs of the tofu!

A group of parents came together

to have a meal,

but they said it was an illegal assembly!

They detained five of us.

Did the authorities know

you were Ai Weiwei's people?

They suspected it,

but we dodged the question.

We said we were all volunteers,

there on our own.

The way I see it,

we weren't there as anybody's people.

We were just doing the same work.

That's what I've always thought.

It's like we were doing

the same work as Ai Weiwei.

I think it concerns every one of us.

It's not just about art.

It's also about life.

Blogs and the Internet

are great inventions for our time

because they give ordinary people

an opportunity

to change public opinion.

There was a group of people

like him in Beijing...

like Ai Weiwei, long ago,

in the Cultural Revolution.

Their parents were Party members,

very famous ones.

But their fathers

were labelled as Rightists in 1 957.

They feared nothing,

and said whatever they felt.

He's like his father, the poet Ai Qing.

He was also an opinionated

and romantic artist.

Artists can easily offend others.

When my father was 1 8,

he went to Paris to paint.

He came back when he was 20.

He was captured

by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party.

They kept him in prison for many years.

By the time he got out of prison,

he was a famous poet.

After that,

he joined the Communist Revolution.

He went through 40 checkpoints

on his way to Yan'an.

That's idealism.

At any checkpoint, he could

have been thrown in jail, or killed.

During political struggles,

my father was always

the biggest enemy of the people.

There were political actions

in every corner of China.

No one could escape it.

One time during a demonstration,

I remember,

someone used brushes and ink,

the kind we do calligraphy with,

to splatter my dad's face.

His whole face was covered in black ink.

Another time someone used a gun

to beat his back.

Things like that happened many times.

Weiwei saw all of this.

Ny dad tried to kill himself many times.

These are experiences I cannot erase.

Before that trip to Chengdu,

we'd never met the activist Tan Zuoren.

We just heard he was also investigating

the students' deaths.

If a society, when faced

with such a big natural disaster,

has no one who speaks up...

I think maybe I'd rather not be a part of it.

Where's Lao Na Ti Hua?

By the time we got to Chengdu,

it was already midnight.

They took us to grab a bite.

We had the local snack lao ma ti hua.

Thank you for your hard work.

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