talk.politics.china

The Chinese Saga of Olympic Shame Continues.... 'Bird's Nest' designer
slams 'fakeness'/Reuters


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'Bird's Nest' designer slams 'fakeness'

Article from: Reuters


August 10, 2007 09:14pm

TWO days after China marked the one-year countdown to the Olympics with
fireworks, pomp and ceremony, the Chinese co-designer of the Games' most
iconic stadium has slammed the event as a public relations sham.

Ai Weiwei, one of China's foremost architects, said he feels ¡°disgusted¡±
that the $400 million, Bird's Nest National Stadium he helped design
with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron has 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,¡± the portly artist told Reuters at a studio in
Beijing's northeast suburbs.

"I'm not interested. 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 gala with fireworks, dancers and pop stars on Tiananmen
Square, scene of a bloody army crackdown on student-led pro-democracy
demonstrations in 1989.

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 2000-year-old Han dynasty vase for art
and in 2000 co-curated an exhibition called ¡°F..k Off¡± in Shanghai,
speaks candidly - and from personal experience.

Ai was raised in a labour camp in China's remote northwestern region of
Xinjiang, after his father, Ai Qing - himself regarded as one of China'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 as a ¡°pretend smile¡±.

¡°Can a nation be celebrated and be so proud with this ignoring of its
past?¡± Ai asked, sitting on a bench next to one of his works, a
distended wooden slab called Crooked Coffin.

¡°Can you have the self-confidence to clearly examine yourself, rather
than to give this kind of pretend smile on your face?

"It's this kind of fake smile which is disgusting ... so I hate this.¡±

When asked about what China 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.¡±

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