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Games fever a sham: stadium designer
Reuters in Beijing
Aug 11, 2007
Two days after Beijing marked the one-year countdown to the Olympics with fireworks, pomp and ceremony, the co-designer of the Games' most iconic stadium has slammed the event as a public relations sham.
Ai Weiwei, one of the country's foremost architects, said he felt "disgusted" that the US$400 million "Bird's Nest" National Stadium he helped design with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron had become a proud symbol of China's development.
"I've already forgotten about it. I turn down all the demands to have photographs with it. I'm not interested," the artist said at a studio in Beijing's northeastern suburbs yesterday.
"I would feel ashamed if I just designed something for glamour or to show some kind of fake image."
On Wednesday night, Chinese and Olympic officials hosted a 10,000-strong celebration in Tiananmen Square.
Ai's criticism stands in marked contrast to the upsurge in national pride the Olympics has generated, though it does join a chorus of deliberately timed criticism from mainly foreign rights groups.
The designer, who once smashed a 2,000-year-old Han dynasty vase in the name of art and in 2000 co-curated an exhibition called "F*** Off" in Shanghai, speaks candidly - and from personal experience.
Ai was raised in a labour camp in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang after his father, Ai Qing - regarded as one of the country's finest modern poets - was purged in the 1950s after being denounced as "an enemy of the state and a rightist".
"I spent five years with him at a labour camp where he cleaned toilets, but these stories become so catchy today," Ai shrugged. "I have my own problems."
He likened China's embrace of the Olympics to a pretend smile.
"Can a nation be celebrated and be so proud with this ignoring of its past?" Ai asked. "Can you have the self-confidence to clearly examine yourself, rather than have a pretend smile on your face ... It's this kind of fake smile which is disgusting ... So I hate this."
Asked what Beijing was trying to hide, Ai said: "There are too many things. The whole political structure, the condition of civil rights ... corruption, pollution, education, you name it.
"Then just say `let's forget about all this', let's just light some big fireworks, let's have those stupid directors. Those people are such opportunists and they just become part of the powerful manipulators because they have no self-consciousness and have such bad taste."
Ai said the 91,000-seat "Bird's Nest" remained a beautiful, if regretful, commission. "I did it because I love design and the idea of how it would be looked at by others," he said. "I can also do self-criticism."
Reuters in Beijing
Aug 11, 2007
Two days after Beijing marked the one-year countdown to the Olympics with fireworks, pomp and ceremony, the co-designer of the Games' most iconic stadium has slammed the event as a public relations sham.
Ai Weiwei, one of the country's foremost architects, said he felt "disgusted" that the US$400 million "Bird's Nest" National Stadium he helped design with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron had become a proud symbol of China's development.
"I've already forgotten about it. I turn down all the demands to have photographs with it. I'm not interested," the artist said at a studio in Beijing's northeastern suburbs yesterday.
"I would feel ashamed if I just designed something for glamour or to show some kind of fake image."
On Wednesday night, Chinese and Olympic officials hosted a 10,000-strong celebration in Tiananmen Square.
Ai's criticism stands in marked contrast to the upsurge in national pride the Olympics has generated, though it does join a chorus of deliberately timed criticism from mainly foreign rights groups.
The designer, who once smashed a 2,000-year-old Han dynasty vase in the name of art and in 2000 co-curated an exhibition called "F*** Off" in Shanghai, speaks candidly - and from personal experience.
Ai was raised in a labour camp in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang after his father, Ai Qing - regarded as one of the country's finest modern poets - was purged in the 1950s after being denounced as "an enemy of the state and a rightist".
"I spent five years with him at a labour camp where he cleaned toilets, but these stories become so catchy today," Ai shrugged. "I have my own problems."
He likened China's embrace of the Olympics to a pretend smile.
"Can a nation be celebrated and be so proud with this ignoring of its past?" Ai asked. "Can you have the self-confidence to clearly examine yourself, rather than have a pretend smile on your face ... It's this kind of fake smile which is disgusting ... So I hate this."
Asked what Beijing was trying to hide, Ai said: "There are too many things. The whole political structure, the condition of civil rights ... corruption, pollution, education, you name it.
"Then just say `let's forget about all this', let's just light some big fireworks, let's have those stupid directors. Those people are such opportunists and they just become part of the powerful manipulators because they have no self-consciousness and have such bad taste."
Ai said the 91,000-seat "Bird's Nest" remained a beautiful, if regretful, commission. "I did it because I love design and the idea of how it would be looked at by others," he said. "I can also do self-criticism."