Page 27 - AI WEIWEI CAHIERS D ART

died in 1916, but it’s very important and still relevant even today.
What about Indian poet Tagore? Did your father meet Tagore when he came to China?
My father did not meet him, but his books were on our bookshelf next to Walt Whitman, the great American poet. I love Leaves of Grass. I also adore the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca and the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. I really love those poets.
And when you came to the United States you met some of the Beat poets.
Yes, I went to Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at St. Mark’s Church. I saw this old man reading about these Chinese poets he had met during his recent visit to China. He started talking about a poet, who had been exiled, and I recognized that it was my father. When Ginsberg came down from the stage, I said, “Hey, old man, you just met my father.” He was shocked and very happy. He said, “Your father was the only person who hugged me in China. All the other people just shook hands.” And then they had become close friends.
Before we finish, I want to share something important about my father’s memory. I want to show you one photograph of where I lived for five years when my father was sent into exile during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I was between ten and fifteen years old at the time. You can see the landscape.
That was in the countryside?
Yes, it was in a rural region of Xinjiang, on the northwest border of China. It is the farthest place to send people into exile. We were living in that black hole underground.
Did you have books there?
My father had a great collection of books on poetry, literature, art, but the Red Guards would often come to destroy them or try to find something suspicious in the writing. So, we had to destroy all those books in order to achieve our “re-education.” I helped my father burn his books.
You had to burn poetry books?
We had to burn every book. We tore off the pages of all the books my father had brought back from Paris and elsewhere. Page by page, I threw all the pages into the fire. If you don’t do it, that is evidence that you are an anti-revolutionary. And now we are making this beautiful book. If this was back during that time, I’d burn it myself.
I have a few last questions. One is the usual question: in 2018, what are your unrealized projects?
I have four or five films ongoing. One is about a disappearance in Mexico. It is about the impunity, the crimes and the violence in Mexican society, and the suffering of its people. Four years ago, forty-three students disappeared on the same day. Nobody knows where they are or whether they are still alive, or where their bodies are. We also just finished one film about the refugee situation called The Rest, and then we are making another film in Bangladesh about the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. There are almost one million refugees gathered in a very small area about twice the size of Central Park.
Our next interview is going to be about your films, all of your films. And at last, I want to ask you to do something for my new Instagram.
My first Instagram was about handwriting and my new Instagram is focused on doodling, because doodling is also disappearing. Would you doodle something on a Post-it for me? You can choose the color.
Any color you want. Except the yellow, I don’t like the yellow that much. Here you are. Some dumplings!
Thank you very much, the dumplings you gave us were amazing. The best dumplings ever! And it was a great interview. The best ever!
Yes, there’s a very good energy in here.
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