Ai Weiwei is China's most politically outspoken artist.
AI WEIWEI, IN TRANSLATION:
If you question about the communist authority,
or if you're questioning basic human rights, then you're not free.
His work is admired and acclaimed throughout the world.
And he designed this in his spare time.
The Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing.
His new work, especially created for Tate Modern,
was two and a half years in the making.
It took 1,600 people to produce 100 million hand-crafted sunflower seeds...
..fashioned from the finest Chinese porcelain,
and spread across the floor of the Turbine Hall.
In tonight's Imagine, we meet a man pioneering in his art
and fearless in his politics.
This programme contains some strong language.
Ai Weiwei is, to my mind, the most significant Chinese artist
that certainly we are aware of in the West.
He's articulate. He's passionate.
He goes to the edge. He's unafraid of criticising the politics
and the situation in his own country.
Nor indeed is he afraid of criticising western capitalism in some way, either.
He is a unique figure.
He's not only an artist.
He's not only a scholar.
He's a photographer. He designs clothes.
He's a specialist in precious stones.
He's an antique furniture dealer.
He is an architect. He's a landscape architect.
I mean, the list is endless.
There a reason why there's not many people like Ai Weiwei in China, and the reason is that it's very risky.
At his studio in Beijing, Ai Weiwei spends much of his day on Twitter,
a website banned in China.
Before it was shut down by the Chinese authorities,
his previous blog was followed by hundreds of thousands.
In a country where his views are rarely published,
it gives him a vital cultural space to exchange ideas.
And it's raised his profile, with a growing fan base.
TRANSLATION:
THEY SPEAK CHINESE
This set is marble works on the...
It's a kind of camera they put out in front of my door by undercover police.
So, they're really monitoring my activity, tapping my telephone.
I think it's kind of intimidating me.
They see this kind of camera everywhere now,
so I think this is really a very important object of our time.
I see many people - other people, who have much less activities -
being put away and, you know, sentenced.
And also some people who relate to me also being put in jail.
So...
If you think about it, you'll lose your sleep.
It's kind of terrifying.
Since I was denied permission from the Chinese government
to interview Ai Weiwei in Beijing, I had no alternative but to use his favoured medium,
the Internet, until we could eventually meet in London. It's very nice to meet you.
You know, I wanted to come but I couldn't come. There was...
'So, er...' Yes.
You're used to communicating in this way, I take it?
I start to...in love with this kind of meetings.
Because this is the way to express yourself freely
in a way that you couldn't otherwise, or you're not personally able to do?
Ah, yes. In many cases, this is the only way - only channel.
And you can really express yourself clearly,
and very direct.
Is that expression - that ability to express yourself -
an important part of who you are
and what you have been all your life as an artist?
Yes, I realise this is, er...
a core value for artists,
to fight for your rights and to clearly express who you are,
and to, again and again, emphasise on that.
Ai Weiwei has always been outspoken,
but a recent project put him in direct confrontation with the government.
An earthquake in the Sichuan province in 2008
caused many school buildings to collapse,
resulting in the death of thousands of children.
In response, Ai Weiwei made a work from 9,000 children's rucksacks,
covering the entire facade of the Museum of Art in Munich.
It spelt out the heartfelt words of one grieving mother,
whose child was killed in the earthquake.
AI WEIWEI:
Hundreds of schools collapsed while the surrounding buildings remained standing,
which convinced many people that the schools hadn't been properly constructed.
In the ruins, there were only schoolbags left and sometimes,
even names were withdrawn from these schoolbags -
children's schoolbags - and of course the young victims
got buried immediately, without the parents having the chance, anyway, to identify.
So, Ai Weiwei took up action and very simple -
he wanted to have names.
This chart we put on the wall is the names of those students
who...died in this, er, earthquake.
Those information has been considered as a state secret,
and never given out.
He asked followers of his blog
to choose one name each and read it out.
VOICES READ THE STUDENTS' NAMES
So, gradually, it generated too much heat
and the government cannot bury this heat,
so they shut off my blog.
One campaigner, Tan Zuoren, was arrested,
charged with revealing state secrets.
During the trial, Ai Weiwei travelled to Chengdu
to testify in his defence and, as ever, documented his experiences.
TRANSLATION:
BANGING
About 3,000 police just rushed into this hotel
and they kicked down the door very violently, and we had an argument.
I asked them to show me their badge
and for what reason they come to the hotel. They beat me.
They locked us in the hotel until the court finished.
After the encounter, Ai Weiwei was suffering from severe headaches,
but travelled to Germany
for the opening of a major new exhibition of his work.
The very moment he arrived in Munich, he had such a headache
that we decided to have him checked out,
and he stayed in hospital after for about two weeks and a half.
The doctor said, "You have to stay and do the operation right away,
"because this is very dangerous.
"You have blood in your..." Your brain. Yeah.
And later the doctor told me,
if he didn't do it immediately I may just die.
Today at his studio, Ai Weiwei examines some newly finished works.
His interest in the cultural traditions of China
has led him to explore the use of ceramic in his artwork.
But for Ai Weiwei, creation and destruction go hand in hand.
It's not good.
I mean, it still feels very painful,
but still, it comes to a point where you just have to do it, you know.
It's more like self-punishing, to...
To really perform with some kind of standard.
Yeah, it is. The whole process is very frustrating.
Born in 1957, Ai Weiwei grew up during a turbulent period in China's political history.
The Cultural Revolution that began in the mid '60s
was the name given to Mao's Tse-Tung's attempt to impose his vision of a classless society,
and to eliminate all those he suspected of undermining his authority.
He singled out enemies such as landlords, counter revolutionaries,
rightists, foreign agents, capitalists and intellectuals.
Millions were forced into manual labour and tens of thousands executed.
Anything that has, er, traces about the past,
or has sentiment about the past, has to be destroyed.
Chairman Mao had a slogan about that we can destroy old world,
and we can also build a new world.
But building a new world has to be based on destroying the old world,
so this is almost like a black-and-white situation.
Ai Weiwei was born the same year that his father became the target
for this intense political campaign,
and so his entire life was defined by his father's persecution.
Ai Weiwei's father, Ai Qing, was a distinguished revolutionary poet
and a member of a communist party.
He advised Mao on literary policy and wrote a poem that praised him.
But his devotion to the party was called into question in 1956,
when he wrote The Gardener's Dream, a short work of allegorical prose
that told the story of a rose gardener
who realised he was discriminating against other flowers.
Despite its subtle theme, the work was seen as counter-revolutionary.
Ai Qing was stripped of his titles and sent into exile with his family,
to a remote region of China at the edge of the Gobi desert.
If you were branded a rightist,
your family became what was called a black family.
So...within society,
you were known to be a family that people weren't supposed to talk to.
You were ostracised.
For next 20 years, he couldn't write anything, you know -
it's not allowed to use his name to write.
He was punished to doing the hard labour.
To clean the public toilets, certain of them, and, er...
Which was considered a most insulting and unbearable work.
They lived under ground, real under ground.
They would dig a hole under ground and were living there.
Of course we have to make bricks ourself, you know,
to dig the earth to make the mould and make the bricks and fire,
and take it out, so I know all the process
and I built my own bookshelves and my own bed.
So you start to learn everything from a very early age.
Ai Weiwei, I think, found refuge in some sense with his hands.
I mean, he became almost obsessively interested in crafting things.
He would make all kinds of home-made inventions.
Of course, when we grew up it's not a fashion to talk about art or literature.
And he burned all his books
because the Red Guard would come any time to check on those books,
so you'd better burn, otherwise constantly trouble you're in.
The government controlled everything,
and the art was part of that.
Many of the artists were put in what they called cow sheds,
which was a kind of prison, and they were given animal names.
They were called snakes and mules.
Students used to take off their belts and whip them.
They stood in an airplane position,
which is like this, for hours on end.
So artists could only function as propaganda painters.
Only approved subjects and approved styles.
For 30 years, really, that was the art scene.
It's interesting, this motif,
which was so popular, which is this motif of the sunflower.
First of all, the idea of sunflowers are always turned to the sun
became a ready metaphor for all of the people turning to look at Mao.
So you have that kind of idea of obedience, inevitable obedience
because the sunflower doesn't choose.
In 1976 Mao Zedong died.
He'd led the country for over 30 years and become one of the most
influential and controversial figures in political history.
Despite the cult of personality that had been fostered around him, after his death
many of his policies were abandoned as China embraced economic reform.
The same year, Ai Qing was allowed to return to Beijing.
It was a turning point for Ai Weiwei too.
By this time your father's reputation had been rehabilitated,
so what did your father say when you said you wanted to go to the United States?
He has been in many, many nations.
He studied in Paris, but in his generation when they
decide to go out, the purpose is to use their knowledge to change China.
So, I told him that's his generation
and I don't care, I just have to leave.
So, I was quite extreme, I made decision I would never come back
to China again so I told my mother on the way to airport.
I said, you know, I'm going home.
Home for Ai Weiwei was New York.
First thing I want to experience is liberty.
This is a really extremely liberal world.
I very much want to record it.
I have nothing else to do. It's very simple, have a camera and take a shot.
Tompkins Square Park probably was the most liberal park in New York City.
It's surrounded by musicians, poet, artist, poor people, homeless.
A riot took place here in 1988 after the city authorities imposed a curfew on the park.
Ai Weiwei found himself in the middle of it.
RAISED VOICES AND SHOUTING
To see civil moment against local government,
or police brutality is very fascinating.
He lived in the lower east side which at that time was really a down and out place.
I went up in the elevator to his apartment and it was just one room,
a mattress on the floor and the only other possession was a TV.
And it was during the Senate investigation of, I think it was the Iran Contra hearings.
He was so excited that the government would actually go after their own.
And you've admitted that you lied to the Congress, correct? I have.
And you admitted that you lied in creating false chronologies.
I realised there's many things I don't really understand.
I should leave some image about it, so later on, maybe it can serve some purpose.
There was a very active Chinese exile community
in New York which he also documented.
He had a lot of connections and dialogues with the Chinese diaspora,
Chinese artists, composers, architects.
And then for example to meet Allen Ginsberg, he met the poets of the beat generation.
For him, the poetry link was vital.
Increasingly exposed to western influences,
Ai Weiwei visited museums
and galleries, acquainting himself with a more conceptual approach to contemporary art.
Taking particular inspiration from Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp.
Don't make too much art, use what's already out there,
but you as an artist, you can say this is art.
Marcel Duchamp, very simple.
And Marcel Duchamp also tries to question the context of art
and when something gets to be art.
When is art? Not what is art, but when is art.
I guess the important thing were these great influences
that he discovered and had.
Some things were direct homages, you know, a coat hanger bent into the shape of the profile of Duchamp.
A double-ended shoe as if the left and the right shoe had somehow morphed into one.
It's the artwork as a kind of small, mysterious enigmatic object.
But in a way, the fact that everything was grounded in the everyday
in stuff that you could find on the street, or in your wardrobe, gave him a great deal of freedom.
It's almost like he'd taken things apart, putting them back
but always with meticulous refinement so they were beautiful objects.
So Weiwei, when he does something, he does it really, really well.
If I look at those photos I can see a young man who is struggling and
trying to adjust himself to a new environment.
It's a lot of struggle and
also a lot of uncertainty there.
By 1989, uncertainty was also brewing in China.
In April, following the death of a pro-democracy official,
groups gathered in Tiananmen Square, calling for political reform.
It's like a people's revolution and seems everything's going to change.
Everybody is so enthusiastic about it.
Going to march. Tiananmen Square.
They had such optimism, all these young people.
They wanted to be represented. They wanted a voice.
My father was in a wheelchair. He personally went to the square to support the students.
He said whoever lost
the way of the people would have lost their governing and
he showed strong support for the student.
Then in early June, the army moved into the streets of Beijing
with troops and tanks, clearing the protestors with live fire.
The exact number of deaths is not known, but it's thought to be in the thousands.
Nobody believed this government can use tank.
The impossible.
You went back to China
to see your father.
Did that draw you back to China and keep you there?
At the very beginning, when I heard my father's ill, you know, after the Tiananmen,
I start to realise
some sort of a responsibility.
I think there was a certain point for him, particularly around Tiananmen
Square, where you had this sort of deep freeze in the Chinese art world and in Chinese commercial life.
And then afterwards you had this reawakening, and I think at that point he started to realise that
something was happening in China he had to participate in.
Ai Weiwei soon began work on a series of underground books.
We call the black book, black book, white book and a grey book.
The book has no title because this
underground printing, that means it's not legal.
Yes, this is my photography.
That's about in front of Tiananmen Square.
It was very dangerous actually with kind of nudity, you know.
People are not
ready to accept.
It became a sensation.
Not only for foreigners who were interested in the Chinese art
world but really for Chinese artists themselves.
I think it was one of the first times in that period where they started
to realise that something was germinating.
It became in some sense kind of iconic documents of that period, and they still are today.
I planted it because in the early time you see my father really likes this kind of objects.
They would touches it till it become very red. Yes, it's very unique.
Ai Weiwei's father died in 1996.
By that time, he'd resumed his role as a distinguished literary figure and one of China's greatest
modern poets, embraced by the establishment.
His last words to his son were a plea for him to make his home in China.
I absolutely have no feeling about China.
That's why my father said to me you should take it as your home.
You shouldn't been so polite and courteous - it's your home, and do whatever you like.
Having decided to stay, Ai Weiwei set up a studio in Beijing.
Fascinated by China's pre-revolution history, its cultural traditions
and craft skills, he found ways to incorporate these into his work.
I want to antiquate it, as I want really to touch those objects.
So, it takes me about six years to really study every aspect and how
history has moved through the shapes and the technology and the craftmanships.
He likes to take iconic objects, objects that in some ways are deeply valued by Chinese people,
either for kind of cultural reasons or for just simple practical reasons.
Then he'll obviously treat it with a kind of flamboyant disregard for its value.
This series of works come from late '90s.
I started to reconstruct of the classic furniture,
so kind of Ming-style furnitures,
but the most unique quality is I'll construct without nails.
He would cut the four legged table in half,
and he would put two legs on the wall and two legs on the ground and he'd have
craftsmen put the table back together again as though it were made in the Ming Dynasty. So it was beautiful.
Is this decorative art?
Is this conceptual art?
Is this kitsch? What is this?
In the period of cultural revolution we would destroy everything.
If you really destroy something, you have to really know
and understand that, so make the whole act become very graceful.
And, so the origin of the new thing can co-exist in the new body.
So, that creates some kind of tension and power.
When Ai Weiwei dropped a Hang vase it's the idea of the breaking
of a vessel as if the vessel embodies and contains history.
There'd been the cultural revolution, lots and lots of
old things, things which had seemed to have value were destroyed.
And following it, China went through this enormous change of industrialisation.
By dropping the urn in 1995, Ai Weiwei was essentially creating
a cenotaph, a tomb of a sort of an unknown soldier.
He was dropping one urn to draw attention
to the many others that were being destroyed around him every day.
You have this urn coated in this industrial paint.
The forms of the original object
still exist, but are obscured.
And this sort of gauche covering seems out of place but is the reality.
And I think that's exactly how he sees the state in which he lives.
The new millennium was a turning point for contemporary art in China.
Shanghai held an International Biennale for the first time and alongside it were several
fringe events, including a show curated by Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi.
The exhibition's Chinese title can be translated
as Uncooperative Attitude, but the English name given was simply, Fuck Off.
This man says "burn his personal identity code on his back".
A lot of...
quite extreme activities.
The Games are awarded to the city of...Beijing.
APPLAUSE
SHOUTING
It was ironic that an artist so closely associated with the avant-garde
should find himself involved with a spectacular project at the heart of the Chinese establishment.
The Bird's Nest Olympic stadium, designed by Ai Weiwei in collaboration with
Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron,
was the centrepiece of the Games.
It was the culmination of another strand of Ai Weiwei's work as an architect.
For although he has no formal training,
he's designed many buildings.
He, at that moment, discovered architecture, and I think
his connection to architecture is very fascinating because today,
he is one of the leading architects
in China. He's part of architecture exhibitions.
So, the architecture and design world have very much embraced him both in China but also wider, in Asia.
Is there something different about his work which characterises it,
because he doesn't have a formal architectural training?
It's simple, but it's very subtle. I think spatially,
it's extremely interesting. Not just in...
the way that the internal spaces work,
but also the way the outside spaces are unpredictable
and have some of the tightness,
the compression of parts of China,
almost like some of the urban spaces in microcosm.
Yes, very personal and very human.
The way, for example, that he uses brick and creates extraordinary patterns.
He has a very distinctive style.
But having played a crucial role in designing the Bird's Nest stadium,
Ai Weiwei distanced himself from the project,
criticising the use of the Olympics by the Chinese government as propaganda.
He uses the publicity he gets in a very knowing way
and he uses exhibitions and projects
like the Bird's Nest stadium as a platform to be visible
and to be able, if you like, to turn them against themselves.
And that's extremely interesting and a very sophisticated way of being an artist.
He has loyalty ultimately only to himself.
I mean, to his project, and that's not a criticism.
What I'm saying is that he operates without fear or favour
and he is basically interested in producing art.
He's made money, he's lost money,
he basically takes his own money and pours it back into his studio.
I don't think he's an especially good businessman.
He is, in all these various ways, kind of uninterested in the broader
experience of being an artist beyond what it actually means to make art.
Do you believe that art can communicate and engage with ordinary people as well?
As well as using ordinary people's experience,
are you a believer in connecting with lots of people?
Um, yes. I think...
the only one art has...
the connecting to the ordinary feelings,
or ordinary common sense,
it becomes most powerful.
DOG BARKS
South of Beijing is Jingdezhen, the home of Chinese porcelain,
and the centre of ceramic production for over one thousand years.
Many of the inhabitants work in the industry,
in a city where even the street lights are made from ceramic.
Jingdezhen was the imperial town for some 500 years
and was...
drastically impacted in the early 1990s,
when the state-owned porcelain workshops shut down,
and suddenly, you had thousands of craftsmen
who had to fend for themselves with nothing to their names.
The only reason great craftsmanship has been preserved as well as it has
is that there is a thriving market for fake reproductions
of famous vessels from, say the Ming and Qing that actually,
this tendency in contemporary China to counterfeit things and pass them off as real
has functioned to preserve
an otherwise doomed set of workmen skills.
Ai Weiwei is visiting his old friend, Mr Liu, who owns this ceramic workshop.
Many of Ai Weiwei's porcelain art works are made here, from the finest Jingdezhen clay.
They use this stone to make the body of porcelain, also the clays.
So one...and mix porcelain,
it comes out a very special colour and a special density in there.
This is the best quality, if you talking about Chinese porcelain.
This is the highest quality you can get.
After you...get the rocks delivered to here,
you put in this watermill,
and, er, to really crash the stone.
It takes so long
to...to really make it to be...
very fine powder.
For the past two years, Ai Weiwei
has been overseeing the production of porcelain sunflower seeds.
These will go towards making the final installation at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
He has employed over 1,600 local artisans.
To be able to bring together this community, getting a whole village
and to get this kind of spirit, I think is quite extraordinary.
And when you look at it, and if you put it next to a sunflower seed,
it's almost impossible, visually, to tell it apart.
During the cultural revolution
and when Weiwei and his father had to go in exile,
there was almost nothing to eat. Many, many, many more millions
Chinese, they lived off these sunflower seeds.
Now, Ai Weiwei decided to create almost a monument
for this part of Chinese history which has to do with the multitude,
which has to do with poverty, but which has to do
also with transformation, because we can overcome.
First, you make moulds,
hundreds of moulds...
Then you compress this kind of mud,
almost like liquid chocolate, into it
to let it dry,
and then take it out with your hand to fix each individual.
Then, just put in the oven
at 1,300 degree. Then...
start paint on both sides, four or five strokes,
and putting in the oven again.
And, yes. The sunflower seeds are made by God,
but this is made really by hands of the people, one by one.
Two-and-a-half years in the making, having travelled over 5,000 miles,
from Jingdezhen to London,
the seeds are finally installed at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
It's amazing.
They're beautiful things.
First of all, in terms of the porcelain,
is this where the Ming vase tradition comes from as well?
Yes... Is the process the same? Same, exactly same.
And why did you choose these sunflower seeds?
When we grew up in a socialist society...
for probably this only...
pleasure we could get is to have pocket...full.
A pocketful of these? Yes. We always like,
if we talk, I would give you some
and we start to eat the sunflower seeds.
Actually, many Chinese, their front tooth,
always leave a mark, because you're eating that.
You'll have like little cracks here, because you...
I don't have it, but a lot of people have it.
Why a hundred million, is there a reason for a hundred million?
Relate to the history and to...
to many, many different issues. You know, mass production...
Yes, I was just thinking about this.
Because China's full. China is full of mass production.
China's history, even recent history of course, is all about reproduction
and mass production, and yet, of course, the irony here is that each of these is individually made.
Yes... It's not mass produced at all. Yes.
I think this is number, but only one sixteenth of China's population.
It's kind of hard to walk.
It's really like sand.
Yes. Well, again, this is very much a physical experience.
Yeah. Always have to come out with, er,
your own individual interpretation.
They're all handmade, aren't they? Each one, or something.
No, they're not?! In this country? By...
loads of Chinese people? That's incredible. Mm.
That makes it that much more special, I guess.
Do you think I can take one home?
The kids have just loved it here.
They've sort of been playing around building almost like sand castles.
I tried digging to the bottom of it and I couldn't.
It's almost like being at the seaside.
Everybody's sitting around burying themselves in these seeds.
WOMAN LAUGHS
Usually, I'd be with my sisters,
and they'd probably end up burying me.
Something totally relaxing out of something which is hard,
yet soft, when you get to grips with it.
It makes you think. Absolutely makes you think.
It's quite nostalgic, I guess.
Everybody of all ages are like... want to straightaway pick it up.
And you remember all those happy memories out playing with your friends,
with your parents, or...
Yeah, it sends you back to younger times, where everything was simple,
you know, you can just sit there for hours on end and not worry about time, or...
Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds can be seen at Tate Modern until May 2011.
For health and safety reasons, however,
full access will be restricted.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk