Ai Weiwei returns to China

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0:30Ai Weiwei: The New Statesman.

0:34Hello, Ai Weiwei. It's Michael Proger from The New Statesman. We last spoke about 10 years ago when I met you in your studio in Berlin. Ai Weiwei is one of the most famous artists of the 21st century. Unless, of course, you live in China. And I'm looking forward to speaking again tomorrow and finding out what's changed for you and your work over this decade. The son of the celebrated poet Ai Qing persecuted and rehabilitated under Mao, Ai grew up in the long shadow of the Communist Party. Defiance, for him, was almost an inheritance. From an early and century blog that challenged state power to filling Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with 100 million hand-painted sunflower seeds, his art has continuously confronted corruption, conformity and the cost of silence.

1:24In China, those are dangerous subjects. In 2009, he was beaten and detained by police, an assault that led to emergency surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. In 2011, he was secretly imprisoned. In 2015, after years of surveillance and pressure, he fled China for Europe. This winter, he returned to Beijing for the first time in a decade to find himself airbrushed from public memory, a figure revered internationally, at home a ghost. Hopefully we can talk about where home is now. and if you feel truly free in any of these places. I look forward to speaking soon.

2:03Ai Weiwei: Oh, hi, this is Wei Wei. I'm looking forward to have a conversation with you. This is a very nice opportunity because we have many contacts before.

2:19The last time we met was 10 years ago. You were living and working in Berlin, and I think you'd only been there about four or five months having finally been allowed to leave China. So perhaps you could fill in quite in bullet point ways. Where have you been and what have you been doing since then?

2:39Ai Weiwei: I stayed in Berlin for about six years. Then I wanted my son to get an English education, so we moved to Cambridge. And how did you find that, your first experience of living in this country? I think it's a very friendly and comfortable location, small town and, you know, it's campus. And nowadays you see a lot of Chinese students or tourists to visit this campus. And now you've moved to Portugal. What made you choose Portugal? after England. I had an invitation for an exhibition in Portugal before I never been to that land. So it was the middle of summer, very hot. And so I was taking a nap during the travel.

3:43Ai Weiwei: I said to him, I need a place to get my visa. You know, I still don't, I still hold Chinese passport, I still don't have a visa for Schengen visa. So Portugal have this policy, if you invest some money you can get a visa. So that's how it got me into Portugal. So you had no link with Portugal before you first went? No, and still I don't have much link there. I only know everything is so slow. since they are taking a long nap after year 1500. So it's a really long nap. Still haven't totally wake up yet. So you've recreated your Beijing studio that was demolished in Portugal now. Is that right? Yes, my studio was demolished in Shanghai.

4:42Ai Weiwei: and I recreated it in the same form but a very different construction method. And what was your thinking behind that? Is that a safe space for you? For me, probably it's a reason I wanted to be more established on the land. So I cannot just like a tourist or traveler to take an existing building. I may need to build something there to make me feel more connected to. So I built this studio. And I have to say, because I have no need for a studio there. Why is that? Why don't you need a studio where you live? Most of my work has been done in hotels or airplanes. I don't need a studio anymore. I have a studio in Berlin, still in Beijing.

5:40Ai Weiwei: And so they structure all the works. And I just give a clear direction, make sure they come up with the right quality. How does that work on a practical basis? If you have the idea, you know exactly what you want to do. You allocate it to either your Berlin studio or your Beijing studio. How do you oversee the process of the actual making of the piece? We are in very intense communication. People working with me already working with me for the past 20, 30 years. So we are just like a family. They know me very well. And still, it's always a little bit of struggle because you have to do it through internet.

6:36Do you micromanage? Every detail of everything, so you don't give them any leeway?

6:42Ai Weiwei: No, I really have to come to millimeters precise. So everything, even every sentence, has to be precise. This is actually one person operation and I don't want to lose any control because otherwise it will give me no joy. I don't have to do one more work or one extra work. So they all understand that. You create work as and when you want to, but you don't have a particular urge to be making something the whole time? No, I, to make a work I always have this mental precondition to say this is my last work. Or at the same time, this is my first work. So by doing that, I do have a liberty to re-establish something.

7:44So if you were to put on an exhibition called Ai Weiwei, The Last Work, we shouldn't believe it?

7:53Ai Weiwei: Actually, you shouldn't believe anything I said. Well, maybe we should stop talking now then. It's interesting, I think, for a lot of us that you keep a studio in Beijing when China was not necessarily a happy place and treated you very badly and your family. Why do you keep a studio there? Why not cut all ties? Now we see plants being moved from here to there, you know, they've been pulled out from the ground. And now you even can have plants have so-called roots living in the air. You don't have to even get into those dirt. But I think fortunately I still can keep my sense of rooting in China.

8:47Ai Weiwei: Even I don't have a particular sense of patriotism or some kind of nostalgia, but I speak Chinese. I'm a typical Chinese man. You're not typical Ai Weiwei, are you? Well, if it comes to lunchtime, dinnertime, I would search for a Chinese restaurant. Just as typical as that, and no more than that. But, I mean, I think it's worth reminding people that your father and the family were exiled during the Cultural Revolution, despite your father a poet being a friend of Mao? Before Cultural Revolution, 1957 is the year I was born and my father was exiled. And, yeah, he was associated with the first generation of revolutionary.

9:47Ai Weiwei: Mao, Zhou Enlai, and all those communist leaders. And you yourself were badly beaten by the police with two brain clots. Your studio was demolished. You were bugged and surveilled. You were brought before the authorities on trumped-up charges of whether it was tax or currency or whatever that were never pressed. You had four years of virtual house imprisonment, but you still want to go back. That's rather remarkable. Well, that means they are not beating me badly enough. I'm still, you know, I survived. I survived very well. And maybe I'm still seeking for trouble. Okay. How's that going? Are you finding any?

10:46I mean, you went back to China for the first time in a decade a couple of months ago, didn't you?

10:51Ai Weiwei: I went back for 21 days after being apart from my mom for 10 years. She is 93 now. So I think this is an absolutely necessary moment for me to go back. And my mom would be the perfect excuse for me to go back to China. Otherwise, I have no reason to go back. So I brought my son, and he is turned to 17 now. And so he come with me for 21 days visit. And how was it? Because you had been, your work and your name had basically been written out of the record in China. So how was it going back for the first time? Had that changed? Are you a person again? It's very nice. Yeah, thank you for asking that.

11:47Ai Weiwei: Yes, as you know, I become a new person or guest of my homeland. You know, most people, they don't know me because, you know, after 10 years, I'm being disappearing or disappeared in this public view. and I started my new life there. Yeah, it's like a comeback from a prison or exile and the youngsters, they certainly don't know me. They don't. But I know the location so well and so familiar to me. It seems I've never been apart, even for a day. So everything is the same. And does your celebrity in the West, does that hold any currency in China? Are people aware of it? I mean, the authorities clearly are, but people in your old neighborhood?

12:53Ai Weiwei: Less than 0.01 % people may know who I am. This is kind of clear censorship. And yeah, I would not be recognized. And will you be going back again? I promised my mom, I would say, she had such a happy moment. I said, don't worry, I'll come back to see you every year. The works that got you into trouble with the Chinese authorities were ones in which you drew attention to corruption within the state, to the infelicities of the rule there, if we can put it that way, to censorship. So if I could just mention after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, when 75 ,000 children died in schools that collapsed?

13:54Ai Weiwei: Not that many. The total casualties are around 80 ,000, but the students is only 5 ,335. So you made a work using their backpacks that brought attention to the fact that the schools, the reason the schools collapsed was because they were poorly constructed because money was being siphoned off by local authorities. And you made another work called steel using the rebar, the reinforcement bars that went into this low-grade concrete. So you were consciously and clearly attacking the state. I'm not attacking the state. What would you call it? I mean, it's not satire. I would try to make those students to be remembered.

14:46Ai Weiwei: And I want to leave a permanent record. You know, this is not just numbers, but rather children have a name, have a birthday. And so I carefully recorded everything in film and in art presentation. But you knew what you were doing. You knew how this would be perceived. I believe what I'm doing is good for not just those people who are children, they lost their life, but it's good for the government to be alarmed and to build more reliable construction buildings because there's a lot of children still in this kind of school. Do you think it worked, alarming the government? Hard to answer because you need another strong earthquake to find out.

15:48Okay, right. So that's a sort of zero-sum game. I mean, the last time we spoke 10 years ago, you mentioned that you believed that it was possible that art could change society. Do you still believe that?

16:04Ai Weiwei: I think the art certainly changed my life, and I'm part of a society. So in that sense, art can really change society. Okay, but what about wider society? The wider society, I don't think people care that much. Not just the art, even the dramatic political conditions such as war or such as migration and all those much larger tragic happens every day. And I don't think people are capable in handling those emotionally or even to come out rational logic or to really act on their beliefs. So I think it's not easy for people really to be associated with certain ideas. But art has traditionally throughout history been a way of dealing with these big issues, whether it's war or inequality, money, poverty.

17:24Do you feel that it no longer really fulfills that role that something else is doing it?

17:28Ai Weiwei: I think art, in general, after this 80 years of a peaceful life, has lost its original sense or detached with reality, but become more decorative or offer some kind of entertaining comfort for the sense of society. So I think very few artists still would consider themselves in connect to reality and to social change or political change. Would you count yourself among the artists who still do care about those things? I was born this way only because my father was exiled and that's a huge gift to me because the year I was born he was exiled. He's the most popular poet from China and he suffered his whole life and his generation many people dead in exile.

18:49Ai Weiwei: So that seems is unfortunate childhood or experience but later turned out to me I think is a gift and make me understand about humanity, about politics, about the individual's strength and freedom. I think it's worth reminding people that when you say exile, that really doesn't cover exactly what you and your family went through, was it? He was exiled to Little Siberia, the edge of the Gobi Desert. He was made to clean public lavatories. He was paraded in front of people. You grew up in extreme poverty, living at one point in underground. This was not just exile to a comfortable villa somewhere on fringes of society.

19:43True, it's very hard to describe this kind of painfulness because that

19:50Ai Weiwei: almost reaches the point you humans just simply cannot survive in that kind of condition. If you You have to live under a dugout, and no electricity, no water, no any necessities, support of life. So, yeah, it's quite an extreme situation. Were you angry with the state then? I'm not angry, but I'm quite frustrated to see why truth or fact cannot be established and why we cannot meet the mistakes that have been made. Not really angry. So your book, which is about censorship, do you feel China, we'll start with China, But do you feel China is censoring more now than when you left it 10 years ago?

20:58Less the same?

20:59Ai Weiwei: I think a little difference there. China compared to other states, compared to 10 years ago, has much more confidence. They established their national position in much stronger position now. Yeah, you just have your prime minister in China now. So as we can tell, they are less nervous. But still in many sense, they are very careful with the ideology narratives. So they cannot allow any different opinion or ideas about their legitimacy. If anything related to that, it simply cannot exist. So if you were to return and produce work in China while living there, do you think the reaction against you would be very similar to the one 10, 15 years ago?

22:08Ai Weiwei: I think if I did whatever I did 10-15 years ago, it was simply totally diminished, disappeared. So today we don't have that kind of space because that was the beginning of the internet. States still don't know how to control or how to handle it. Now they are very sophisticated. But the work you did then remains. The picture of you in Tiananmen Square giving the middle finger, it still exists. Every mark I made exists. That's why we always have to do some kind of act when we can do it. Because later maybe you don't have the chance. So that's also I always tell myself. myself. If you really think something, you have intuition, just do it.

23:10Ai Weiwei: Because later, you don't have the opportunity or you even have no opportunity even to regret about it. So when you were there on your recent visit, did you feel the urge to make anything? No, I think to go back is already an act. So I never really desperately want to do something unless I'm really in that kind of mentality or condition that come out naturally. So I don't prepare for doing anything. Your book on censorship, you suggest, if I read it right, that there is almost as much censorship, though of a different sort, in the West now than you experienced in China those years ago. Would you explain a little bit about where you see censorship in the West and how it manifests itself?

24:13Ai Weiwei: Well, clearly, it's my personal example, you know, when I start to analyze online, just casual talk about Israel's relation with the U.S., you know, tweets, you know, who cares about tweets? Even Chinese authority doesn't really care about tweets like that. But that caused such a backfire. And immediately, four or five of my shows being canceled, not just in London, but in New York, in Berlin, and in Boston. And, you know, nothing would happen like that. But those locations to show how globally just one sentence can be so devastating. But I think it's worth saying you have a huge following on social media.

25:17So it's not just when you say it's just a tweet. It's not just a tweet. It's going out to hundreds and thousands if not millions of people. Well, it's just a tweet. This was following the Hamas attacks on Israel, wasn't it? It was a febrile and dangerous moment. So I wonder if you made those tweets now, maybe the effect might be different.

25:43Ai Weiwei: If I made tweets now, people would not even notice because I made that too early. What happens later when you see the images on TikTok or on Twitter, so many children and women being smashed and dead with no reason, then my taste is considered too a mediocre taste. It doesn't really have any freshness in there. But, of course, if you say something earlier, you're always in danger. Okay. Okay. So your personal experience of cancel culture in the West was really around that particular moment? Not really. Before that, you already sense in universities, or not before, but at the same time, universities, students, especially in U.S., universities and principals or editors or, you know, actors, sportmen, they're all being censored.

26:53Are you being censored now in any way? Maybe self-censored. Okay. Well, I mean, this is part of the book, self-censorship. And you say in the West that money is often behind self-censorship. perhaps you could expand on the role of money in Western censorship.

27:13Ai Weiwei: Censorship is a tactic for any powerful state trying to maintain their control. It's not good or bad. It's just the nature of power. Those kind of powers can be political, such as a state or financial, you know, big companies, big financial interests or culture, museums, galleries, and any kind of institution. So they all have their own way of censoring. but very often it wouldn't affect you only because you get no more opportunity to practice. Then that means you would have hardship to survive. So that happens everywhere. I mean, intrigued by that and the way that you suggest that individuals are, it's not just corporations with lots of money but it's individuals trying to keep hold of what they have.

28:23Sure.

28:23Ai Weiwei: If you have a family, if you have a child still have to go to school, you borrowed money from bank, you have loans, and you have carried ones, they would always tell you, don't do it. And so why you have to risk for some principal to hurt yourself and your people you loved or you know it's just nonsense. So do you find yourself self-censoring in your work and in your life? Clearly. Normally I would criticize whatever I like to but which is not a good habit you know. My father used to tell me if you talk too much the trouble comes. You know it's the Chinese way. That comes the experience of his life.

29:18Ai Weiwei: But maybe that sentence I'm not listened to, but even bring me to. I want to always see what trouble is like. So I become very attractive. I keep talking. I talk about China, I talk about Germany, I talk about the United States. But only when I come to Britain, my son clearly tell me, wait, wait, don't criticize British because I have to study here for many years. I totally made the agreement that I will not say anything which is not proper. Okay, okay. So that sense of, you know, it's like, yeah, you give up for doing that. But also when you started making work, it was you alone. And now you have, I don't know, how many people do you have that work for you?

30:18A hundred? No, maybe 20. 20. so we can assume that they're in a sense your family you're responsible for them oh yeah in two different countries

30:31Ai Weiwei: yeah past 30 years I have to pay the salary you know monthly never miss a date you know so I'm very proud of that so if you go too far in a work they will also bear the consequences I think so When I was arrested, several of my colleagues, for no reason, also being arrested for the same amount of time. And such a pressure, and they did nothing. They just took orders from me. That's the pressure that you have to live with when you're thinking of making a piece, of not just the technicalities of the piece and how it will be received, but the consequences for those who work with you and around you?

31:23You have to consider about it. Does it ever stop you though?

31:27Ai Weiwei: In some way it has been stopped but I will be a little bit more wild than now. Okay. So how would you characterize your work now? Is it less political? Is it more geopolitical? it's a very soft toned work with all good intentions and colorful and attractive sometimes even sexy i think you're pulling my leg here um perhaps we could talk about the work you're doing in manchester making for manchester in the summer amazing manchester so let me get this story right You bought from a button factory 30 tons? A few million buttons. Okay, a few million buttons. Maybe a few hundred million buttons. Okay, a lot of buttons.

32:28The factory was closing down. It was a button manufacturer. You bought the stock. You had it shipped out to China.

32:36Ai Weiwei: Not China, but to Berlin. To Berlin. Yeah, later I made the work, then shipped to China. Okay, so I'm trying to work out the global links here. Yeah. So what have you done with these buttons? Well, those buttons also from a very casual chat on Twitter. You know, Twitter is really troublesome. Now you call it X, you know, because you have so much time, nothing to do, Just look through. Then someone said, we have to close down our factory. We have so many buttons. We have to land for it. I said, oh, no, don't do it. I don't know why I said don't do it. So they contacted me and they said, do you want them?

33:25Ai Weiwei: I said, yes, I want them because I don't want you just waste those buttons. And there's a story related to my early life. When we live in Xinjiang, you know, the Gorby Desert, if we lose one button, we couldn't find another one to replace it. Simply, it's just no... You couldn't find something in the desert to find a button, right? You cannot make a button. So you just have to tie your clothes or something, find a string, or even very hard to find a string. So then there's a huge problem on how I'm going to use it. I studied history of Manchester then realized that's the first city for industrial revolution under their most industrious making fabrics.

34:22Ai Weiwei: That attracted me. Then I started to do a little bit deeper research Britain has invaded China three times since the First Opinion War in the 1840s. Then in the 1840s, First Opinion War, Second Opinion War, and by 1900, eight nations, English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Austria, and eight of them invaded China, opened up Chinese market, forced China to do so. So that is very interesting to me because that really covers the 280 years of the history between the West and China. And it finished the Chinese kingdom. Qing dynasty and China started to become a nation cut off from its past.

35:37Ai Weiwei: And of course, they imported communism, Karl Marx or Lenin from Soviet. Then China became a communist society. China was not a communist society. So that history, not only about past 1-200 years, but also about my family and about globalization today. Still, it's interesting you still have your head of state in China now, enjoys Chinese food. and made a very historical visit. After eight years, nobody visited China, being seen China as something dangerous or as an enemy. But I think he made a good move because British people are very practical and very quite rational. And you know what is best for an independent country.

36:45So it should be benefited with conversation and communication

36:50Ai Weiwei: between this powerful state. So when Mark Carney talks about China being a more reliable potential partner than the United States of America. Absolutely. And when Keir Starmer goes there for similar reasons, one suspects to see if we can find a stable trading relationship. Is that a fair reflection of China? Are Carney and Starmer being duped or do you think that's a realistic attitude? Well, so far I think China maintains a very stable direction to build up their own base, larger and stronger and they have no intention to invade another nation or take another president from somewhere else. So you don't think Taiwan is...

37:50China will never do it.

37:52Ai Weiwei: Taiwan is an issue between Taiwan and China. Or I would not say between Taiwan and China. In Taiwan there's also party, they also think there's one China. You know, they're called the Nationalist Party. There's a party, communists push them out. But even just in recent days, they are getting much more closer because they are against another party there, which more had the intention to be independent. But I would never really think they can achieve that because just China would not allow this to happen and that would really start a war. Do you think an invasion is possible?

38:47Ai Weiwei: I think China never gave up that intention. If there's a sense of foreign interference like the US, or they make an announcement of being independent, definitely there will be war. so with with that i want to go back to this idea of of what art art can and cannot do if you saw i think in the past you've been very clear that china's not an expansionist nation it doesn't invade other countries it's other countries historically have invaded china as you've just mentioned uh if that were to reverse it would that be a valid subject for to treat in your work? China and the Taiwan relations? Yes. I don't know.

39:41I only can start

39:43Ai Weiwei: working when something happens. I cannot predict what is going to happen. And hopefully nothing will happen. You know, it's not good for people in Taiwan. And also, I don't think it benefits China at all. China is very large already and it doesn't really need that kind of expansion. But principally, they still think they are unified. And what about what's been going on in the art world in America under the Trump administration with the censorship that's been going on there in museums, in the Smithsonian Institution and recasting American history as a Trumpist narrative rather than a more varied one.

40:35I mean, presumably that has echoes for you of what you experienced in China.

40:41Ai Weiwei: Well, what happens in the United States is not much different from what happens in China in those most difficult times, such as the Cultural Revolution or even earlier when my father was exiled. But of course not to that extreme degree. But still the intention and the effort will be the same. But America has a very short history, less than 250 years. And Trump would have maybe a few more years. So maybe that's a good lesson for people, not just American people, but globally, to see how we have to deal with this really new situation. So you would counsel taking a step back, seeing what's going on now as a historical blip and waiting for it to pass and then seeing how things rearrange themselves?

41:50Ai Weiwei: I would think so, but also, but something you can see American is no longer as America half a century ago. It's going down and descending, and this seems inevitable. Because, of course, you lived there for a bit. True. In the 90s, I spent about 12 years in the United States. And then you can sense, you know, they come to this conclusion, the capitalism, the ultimate path for them is imperialism. You know, so when they cannot have enough resources to maintain this kind of lifestyle or this kind of hype, they will invade another nation or take extreme actions. It seems that a theme of your work is taking destruction and making something new of it, whether it's the metal reinforcing bars from Chinese schools, whether it's antique Chinese furniture or jars.

43:08I wonder what you made of the spate in the West of the toppling of monuments around, especially in America. These signifiers of an older way of life and an older societal system being pushed over, broken up, repurposed. Were you tempted to take the leg of a bronze statue and turn it into something else?

43:32Ai Weiwei: I think there's so much ruins in humanity in every aspect. It's very hard to catch it. And in almost every direction, you see those ruins. It seems to me that, in fact, you were ahead of that particular moment in the way that you did look at the past in a way that was one of your celebrated early works was dropping an antique vase and taking a series of photographs as it fell and smashed. So that attitude towards the past, what were you doing with that? Showing that the past was a malleable property? Well, the attitude is kind of deconstructive to questioning established value judgment and to say if we can offer something with a different kind of narrative.

44:46Ai Weiwei: But today, I will not do the same thing again. I think I'm at peace with the world. under my age, you know. Okay, so it's taken a long time. Yes, still I can catch up with that. What about if a future artist took some of your work and started to destroy that for reasons of their own? How would you feel? I don't even care. You know, my work once being done, it's been done, you know. So you don't see it having an afterlife? I only care about the integrity of the idea rather than physical work. That's curious when you say that you keep a very close control of every aspect of making a piece. Yes. But the most important element you're now saying is that initial idea.

45:40Ai Weiwei: Once finished, I would rather forget about it. But the process of being intensively trying to control it gave me joy. Do you like to see your work in museums or in public spaces? I don't like to see contemporary art museums. I think it's full of prodigious and arrogant. And, you know, it's like a tomb yard. and I don't find my relatives in there. So the only museum I want to see is the human history museum or this kind to see where we really come from. So is that possibly why your work has this strong anthropological element that it always deals with the human experience? We always want to see where we started.

46:38Ai Weiwei: and it's not too long ago. Human activities just a few thousand years apart. Now we become already so crazy. That's true. And getting crazier. But I find this very curious, Weiwei, that when you had a big show at the Royal Academy a decade ago, when you walk through those old galleries, 250 years old, and you're seeing your work in an institution like that, a historical institution, did you really feel no pleasure, satisfaction? I have pleasure when I think they recognized my effort. There's certain pleasure there, but I do not have pleasure of my work. It's rather about the recognition of others because the art is about communication.

47:35Ai Weiwei: So I certainly not just made the idea. It come from me making for myself, but to make a work so big. And certainly you're not just going to, you know, to appreciate by yourself. Does that mean you're always, always satisfied with the work you make or never satisfied with the work you make? It's more almost like an exercise. You have to stop exercise when you're very tired. But next day you're fresh again. You start again. So, you know, as long as life goes on, you always come out with some ideas and try to make it. Otherwise, I have nothing to do. I cannot always sit in there for an interview because that only lasts for one hour.

48:24We can talk for longer if you like. You can even tweet as we talk. I've got one final question, if I may. Your work is almost all on a very large scale. Do you ever create work that is personal, small scale, intimate, and handmade by yourself?

48:46Ai Weiwei: Oh, it's at the beginning of my work. I wish you wouldn't do this, you know, you need my consent. Okay, I love that sentence. And at the beginning of my work, I always make small ones because I have no money. I have very limited materials and I care the touch of the work. And later, unfortunately, they always give me a difficult task. They said here is a federal jail. Can you make a work which is huge? You know, like an architurist or a real academy even is a small space for me. But like Manchester will be a huge space. And I have to fulfill it. And so the architectural element started to challenge me to how to give a work which can support this architectural quality.

50:01So, yeah, it's because I've been ordered to do that.

50:09Ai Weiwei: But if nobody asks me, I will never do even one more show. I did over 150 personal shows, one person show. Not even one of that is from a way demanded. It's always being invited. So I will feel happy to play card games or walking on the park or something, you know. Fishing probably. I still can learn something. Are you really saying that if nobody invited you to make any more work, make another exhibition, you wouldn't create another thing for the rest of your days? Not another thing. Now I have three warehouses all packed with works. It's very costly. You've done enough. More than enough. Fantastic.

51:00Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. It's so nice talking to you. And to you.

51:08You've been listening to The Exchange from The New Statesman with me, Michael Proger, and my guest, Ai Weiwei. This podcast was produced by Catherine Hughes. The podcast will be back next week.

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