Curator: Ai Weiwei

Gallery Hours:2:00 - 6:00 pm. Wednesday - Sunday.
Place:China Art Archives & Warehouse

Interview

Date: October 15, 2008
Between: Ai Weiwei & Gao Weigang

Ai: Shall we start? Do you have any tea?
Gao: Yes.

Ai: Let’s start from a self-introduction, shall we?
Gao: Well, first of all, my “place of origin” is Heilongjiang Province.

Ai: Heilongjiang?
Gao: Yes. I was born in Jixi of Heilongjiang in ’76.

Ai: Is Jixi a city? Can you explain the two characters in the city name?
Gao: It’s a city. Ji is the Chinese character for “chicken” while Xi means “west”. There are also places in the region with names such as Jidong (meaning “chicken east”), Xi Jixi (meaning “west to ‘chicken west’”) and Jiguan (meaning “chicken comb”) Mountain. It is the highest mountain in the region with a crematory on it. That why the cities west and east to it are called Jixi and Jidong. ???

Ai: How big is Jixi City?
Gao: Now there are around one million people.

Ai: So it’s pretty big.
Gao: Right. That’s why it is not classified as county-level city.

Ai: Is the city’s major industry coal mining?
Gao: Yes. The city started with a mining bureau that built a huge compound. It’s practically a small city itself. So I imagine that’s why the place later on developed into a city. During the Japanese invasion, the city was already a coal producing center.

Ai: Ah. It’s a bit like Fushun City in Liaoning province (The city of coal-mining was occupied by Japan until 1945). Does your hometown still have any sign of Japanese culture?
Gao: When I was a kid, I could see several Japanese style buildings and houses. One of them is turned into a guest house now. These buildings all have grey and thick walls and small windows. At least it’s my impression.

Ai: I suppose in the coal mines there are nothing Japanese now.
Gao: That’s right.

Ai: How is the quality of the coal produced there? Is it clarain coal?
Gao: Yes, we produce premium quality block coal.

Ai: Do miners usually find amber during work?
Gao: Haha, I don’t think so. But I hear that they can dig out pretty weird things. For example, there is one liquid thing that solidifies within seconds it comes out. ??

Ai: That sounds like amber.
Gao: But that thing is black. I don’t know what it is.

Ai: I guess it is turpentine.
Gao: Probably, I guess. Anyway, the main industry in my hometown is mining. There are a lot of miners.

Ai: Have you ever worked in a mine?
Gao: No. I haven’t the opportunity yet.

Ai: Why? There is no one in your family that works in a mine?
Gao: Well. It’s because I had to go to school when I was in my hometown. But I did live in the mining area for some time. When I was a kid, I lived with my grandma in the suburban mining area. I could see huge pyramid-like coal piles everywhere.? ?

Ai: I guess the roads must also be black then.
Gao: Yes, most parts of them are covered by coal ashes. I could also see many workers returning home from a night shift who were covered with black ashes. The only white parts are their shiny white teeth and eyes.

Ai: Why didn’t they take a shower before going home?
Gao: Some people just didn’t. I also remember that every one of them would carry something in their hands…

Ai: Lunchboxes?
Gao: If they did hold a lunchbox, it would be covered with black ashes and I couldn’t tell, anyway. Some people would carry a block of wood on their way home.

Ai: From the mines?
Gao: Right. There were plenty, after all. Some would take with them coal blocks.

Ai: Coal blocks?
Gao: There were also people who would take a loaf of bread. The kind…

Ai: ...that’s made of iron?
Gao: Haha. No. The bread loaf was packed in paper bags. All the things that the workers carried looked black to me. In winter times, people would use a lot of honeycomb coal. There is a coal washing plant with a river nearby. So people would put up fences in the pitch-black river to create small pools of water and then drench the pools. After that, they would dig up the sediment: high-quality coal cakes.

Ai: I guess the plant discharged its waste water into the river... So, what do you parents do? Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Gao: I have a younger brother. My parents are staying in my hometown (Jixi).
My mother is retired now and my father is about to retire very soon. Other relatives in my family are common citizens.

Ai: Why did you decide to learn art?
Gao: I liked art even when I was a small child. I didn’t like to play with other kids. I used to live in a compound with a courtyard in it. So I would just stay in the courtyard…

Ai: You were quite lonely and eccentric.
Gao: I guess so.

Ai: I suppose eccentric people usually end up being a killer or an artist. They say Yang Jia (a Chinese citizen who has recently been sentenced to death for murdering six Shanghai police officers with a knife in 2008) is an eccentric person.
Gao: You are probably right.

Ai: You are not planning on killing anyone, are you?
Gao: Probably...not.

Ai: Ah-ha, why a pause?
Gao: When I was a child, I would be given a key necklace and spend most of my after-school time in the courtyard. My parents would give me some pictorials to doodle on. Later on, I went to junior middle school and barely made it into senior middle school. I was a good student for some time and then I started to smoke, play videogames and do other “bad things”.

Ai: Like what, dating?
Gao: No, I was not sophisticated enough. I would just fool around with my pals. I think I am still not sophisticated enough to understand fully a relationship.

Ai: When do you think will you finally get the hang of it, when you are of my age?
Gao: Haha, possible. I was a late boomer. So when I was a kid, I was quite short.

Ai: Now you look fine to me. How tall are you, 176 or 177cm?
Gao: More or less. After I finished high school, I took exams for an art college.

Ai: Which one?
Gao: Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.

Ai: Why did you pick that one?
Gao: I would never even dream of getting into China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. I heard that the exams were extremely difficult. Besides, I didn’t have much travel experience before I went to college. I only went to Beijing once. I visited the Great Wall…

Ai: Did you actually climb it? How did you feel?
Gao: Yes, I did. I felt pretty tired and nothing else.

Ai: Why did you visit the Great Wall? How long was the trip to Beijing? Who took you here?
Gao: I was with my parents. Beijing impressed my greatly. It was the first time for me to see and taste quality ice cream. I could still remember that the ice cream was panda shaped. I thought, what a genius thing to invent that! Besides, I bought it on the Tiananmen Square.

Ai: You could only get popsicles in your hometown?
Gao: No. But we didn’t have ice cream with two colors. It was very expensive. Fifty cents.

Ai: That was expensive.
Gao: I took the college entrance exams in 1994. Before that, I learned painting from an uncle who wanted me to go to an art school very much. I also wanted to take up painting as a career. I did pretty well in all my subjects in senior high school, which was an advantage to me. And I picked Tianjin Academy of Fine arts, an art school that was relatively easy to get into.

Ai:? So your painting skills were not so good then.
Gao: Right. Before the exams, I practiced very hard. It so happened that the painting test picked an unexpected subject, which was a very good thing for me. So I got into the academy because of very good luck.

Ai: What’s the usual subject?
Gao: Still life painting. But I didn’t have much practice in that subject. My practice focused on head portrait. A lot of students didn’t know how to paint portraits, as most of them only practiced that subject for a few days before the exam.

Ai: You mean portrait in oil painting?
Gao: Yes.

Ai: Fxxk. What kind of entrance exam is it? If you are going to train your students in painting, why do you require candidates to be able to paint oil paintings? Even students in the oil painting department shouldn’t have to master oil painting at the time of entrance exams. The whole point of setting up such a department is to teach students how to paint! ?
Gao: Well, students who would like to study industrial design are also required to take exams on blueprint drawing. It’s equally strange and unreasonable.

Ai: Really? These exams are too freaking weird. Anyway, were you very excited to know that you were admitted to the art school?
Gao: Actually, I was pretty calm when I got the admission letter from the academy.

Ai: Come on! You were in the remote Heilongjiang Province and were going to college in Tianjin, a big city.
Gao: In fact, I kind of don’t like Tianjin. I even regret my choice of going there. I have stayed there for around 15 years now.

Ai: Is your wife a Tianjin local?
Gao: No...She is my classmate from Shandong Province.

Ai: Why don’t you like Tianjin?
Gao: Usually, when you like a place, you have a million reasons. But when you don’t like a place, you don’t really need a reason.

Ai: Do you like the Goubuli restaurant (“Go Believe” in English, a local chain restaurants famous for their baozi, or steamed bun with fillings)?
Gao: I don’t like that thing.

Ai: Why? Why did you call it “the thing”? Isn’t the place famous for its baozi?
Gao: I don’t know. But a lot of friends like to go to a Goubuli restaurant when they visit. I am very reluctant to go, as the food they serve is overpriced and tastes horrible. You would have to pay a few dozen bucks for a dish of fish-flavored shredded pork in hot sauce.

Ai: Really?
Gao: Yes. You can’t just buy baozi. You have to order other dishes.

Ai: Oh, really? I remember going to a Goubuli restaurant once. I asked for some fxxking garlic, as I believe that baozi should go with garlic. They said they didn’t have any.
Gao: Hah-hah. You won’t even find a place to complain.

Ai: What a fucking city Tianjin is! What’s wrong with it?
Gao: I have no idea. I have never thought about it. I just take it as it is.

Ai: Can you describe the city in two or three sentences?
Gao: Tianjin is like a big pot full of sticky stuff. Everyone enjoys staying in it and they never think about leaving it, as they feel warm and close to each other. But it seems that Tianjin locals don’t like people from other places.

Ai: I agree. They seem to look down upon people from other regions. They are a bit like Shanghai people.
Gao: Yes. Even people from Shanghai and Beijing would be considered provincial by Tianjin people. They like to call them rural people from the countryside.

Ai: Shanghai locals also like to call people from other places “xiangwunin” (meaning “country folks”).
Gao: In fact, we all are. Who in China does not have his/her root in the countryside?

Ai: Tianjin people used to see a lot of huge ships with a lot of foreign businessmen at their port, as it is located by the sea. That experience might have made them arrogant.??
Gao: They can see a lot of foreign people in these days as well. Currently, Tianjin is witnessing a lot of changes.

Ai: How is the school you are working in? Do you find your job interesting?
Gao: I can’t say if it (the school) is good or bad. And my job is just a job.

Ai: So it’s a common job.
Gao: Yes. It is so common that I sometimes find it boring. It is just an ordinary organization.

Ai: Is there a person named Ma Huiwu working there?
Gao: Never heard of him.

Ai: You studied in the oil painting department. Why did you decide to come to Beijing after that? You didn’t come to Beijing right after graduation, did you? ?
Gao: No. I idled away several years after graduation, doing nothing.

Ai: Doing nothing?
Gao: Yes. My wife and I didn’t want to find a job. So we stayed at home and watch some videos.

Ai: You mean watching porn?
Gao: Not really. Even if we wanted to, we didn’t know where to buy them.

Ai: What kind of movies did you watch? Can you name five of them?
Gao: We watched all kinds of movies, for example, Beyond the Clouds and Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders. We also watched many boring Japanese and Korean movies.

Ai: You mean Texas, Paris. You look a bit South Korean.
Gao: North Korean, I think. Hah.

Ai: Well, people from the two countries are of the same ethnic group. So you also think you look Korean.
Gao: I do.

Ai: But why? Any Korean relative in your family tree? ?
Gao: I asked my parents about it. It seems that we don’t have any Korean relatives. I don’t why I look Korean. Maybe it’s because of my long hair.

Ai: Right. You have silver-grey hair. When did you start to have grey hair?
Gao: 1998. They year I graduated.

Ai: Why did your hair turn grey over such a short period of time?
Gao: I was worried about securing a job in the junior college I am currently working in.

Ai: Where is it?
Gao: Tianjin. Somehow it was pretty difficult for me to get a job there and the whole process was full of twists and turns. So I was very worried in that year.

Ai: How exactly did you feel?
Gao: I felt that I was charged with electricity but couldn’t find an outlet. And…

Ai: Did that affect your daily eating?
Gao: (Coughing)...

Ai: Drink some water. I guess your stomach isn’t very well.
Gao: Right. It started recently...(coughing). Besides, the melon seeds I just had upset my stomach...(coughing)

Ai: Hah, a sick stomach.
Gao: It started last year after I moved to Beijing. I didn’t have regular meals and always ate in restaurants. I would also eat the same kind of food for days.

Ai: That’s how you ruined your stomach. Does your family still stay in Tianjin? That must be very difficult for you. I think there are many artists in Beijing in the same situation.
Gao: Yes, quite a number of them. They think I am luckier than them, as Tianjin is close to Beijing. Visiting their families is a huge task for artists whose families still stay in far-away provinces like Yunnan and Sichuan

Ai: Right. Now there is express train service connecting Beijing and Tianjin, right? It takes only 28 minutes.
Gao: 28 or 30 minutes.

Ai: There are frequent delays of two minutes?
Gao: The only inconvenience is that Beijing South Railway station is very far away from where I live.

Ai: So it would take less time travelling on a train. But to get to the train station, you would have to spend two hours. The train service is provided everyday, right? Have you tried it yet?
Gao: Over 20 shifts a day. But I haven’t tried it yet.

Ai: That’s very good. You can even commute between the two cities everyday. How much is a ticket?
Gao: First class 58 Yuan, second class 69 Yuan. But I haven’t tried it yet.

Ai: That’s pretty expensive. Do you plan to take the train some day? Or maybe you have little interest in new things.
Gao: I am not really very interested in the train. And I would only be interested in new things that I find enjoyable.

Ai: Then what are you interested in?
Gao: Eating dinner.

Ai: Is your blood type AB?
Gao: Type B. I like to try new dishes in new restaurants.

Ai: Oh? You like that?
Gao: Yes. And I like to think about how these dishes are made.

Ai: Then why don’t you open your own restaurant?
Gao: I don’t think I am smart enough to do that.

Ai: But all you need to do is cook. You don’t need to worry about other things.
Gao: I think that liking something and being good at something are different.

Ai: So you are saying that you like cooking, but you are not good enough to open a restaurant.
Gao: Opening a restaurant is quite different from cooking at home. I don’t know how a restaurant is managed. But anyway, I do know that I can’t run one. It’s just like I can’t climb a mountain. Of course, mountains are not a familiar subject to me and I am not very interested in it. But I can go to the grocery store to buy meat and vegetables regularly.

Ai: You said that neither you nor your wife had a job when you graduated. How did you make ends meet, by spending as little as possible?
Gao: You really didn’t need a lot of money to survive in these years. When I got my first job, my salary could support the whole family. It was even enough after we had a child. It was a common process for almost every family. Besides, I did many other things to earn some extra money, liking selling garment.

Ai: Was that successful.
Gao: Not really. I just broke even. I helped my friends in an advertisement agent.

Ai: So you can work with computers?
Gao: Yes, graphic design and stuff. I also opened a shop selling household products.

Ai: Crap. You do have a plain life.
Gao: That’s right. I am just a most common person without any exciting personal history.

Ai: Why did you decide to move to Beijing?
Gao: In 2005, I decided to go to Beijing, as my child was old enough. What’s more, I didn’t want to do any house chores. Anyway, the fact is, I didn’t really think the whole thing through. I just followed the trend.

Ai: You chose painting as your career, why?
Gao: Because I liked it even when I was a kid.

Ai: But what is painting?
Gao: A very good question indeed. What is painting?... I guess painting is drawing anything in your mind or anything you see. I always follow my heart when painting. I relocated to Beijing in 2005 and moved to my current apartment near the airport in the autumn of 2006.

Ai: So the works we are looking at now were created after the move? If that’s the case, then these works were created in the previous one to two years.
Gao: Yes.

Ai: How did you gain all these experiences? How did all your ideas come into being? Why did you choose such media?
Gao: I feel that I am getting bored about painting, as I am too familiar with it. When you feel sleepy, your mind stops working. I can paint an object easily. But that is it. There is nothing new to it. What’s more, a painting can not express everything clearly. So later on, I decided to choose installation as a new medium to express my ideas in a different manner.

Ai: You seem to be more interested in the medium of expression than expressing yourself. Are you interested in expression itself?
Gao: I don’t set any specific theme for my works. I believe that a person’s mind is constantly changing. Ideas may change every minute. That’s why I don’t have a specific theme…

Ai: Does it mean that you are working on the ‘methodology of the medium’ these years?
Gao: Yes…Another subject I am interested in is consistency. I’ll give you an example. I think of one thing this moment and another thing the next moment. But these things should be connected. The ideas should develop in a gradual manner.

Ai: Progressively.
Gao: Yes, progression and consistency. I always wonder why things are like this. For example, I want to eat meat today. But why do I want to eat meat?

Ai: Why do you want to eat meat?
Gao: Maybe I haven’t eaten any meat in over ten days; or maybe the weather is cold…

Ai: Then why do people in the tropical area want to eat meat?
Gao: Oh? I guess they may have no other options. I am not sure. You would have to ask (tropical people).

Ai: Do you think media are important?
Gao: In fact, I don’t think media are that important. I can still paint if I want to now. I don’t really pay a lot of attention to media.
Ai : Can you talk about this work?

Gao: I am very interested in paper. Every piece of paper is very similar to each other, yet they are slightly different. I chose this as the medium for this work to express a sense of uncertain consistency. Each part of the work may look alike, but they are in fact different. Each part alone does not represent anything. But when they are put together, they make up a completely new thing, which is different from the content on each individual piece of paper.

Ai: What exactly is this thing?
Gao: It’s a pile of paper, over 2000 pages. They make up a black skull that you can not see from any individual page. Each page consists of a black sketch of the cross section. These 2000 cross sections are similar to each other. But they don’t mean anything individually. Only when they are put together,…

Ai: It’s interesting. It is a step further compared with the pair of scissors, another work of yours. The scissors were created with the help of machines, while the skull sketches are painted by hand. Hand painting suspends the work on a fixed level, making it impossible to become the real thing. It’s only real in a conceptual and logical manner. That’s why this work is a step further than the scissors.?
Gao: I think so. In fact, this work does not depict any real things. I created it out of my imagination.

Ai: I’ve noticed that you have tried different media and approaches. What do you want to express through this work, an oil painting on a rock? I guess the painting depicts the view outside a window.
Gao: That’s right. Viewers of a painting are not necessarily the only active part. When they look at the painting, it is also looking back at you. The positions of the two entities can shift. If it’s the case, then it really doesn’t matter which one is actually looking. When you place a rock in the wild, you can also see something. But most of the time, we tend to just ignore it.

Ai: You mean, the rock, as an object or a complete entity, has also become an active part, right? You are not painting on a canvas. The choice of rock shows there are intentions that you want to convey. It makes the whole work lively. What about these rocks?
Gao: I wanted to create a sense of foreign body in the painting. That is why I used totally irrelevant elements, some of which shouldn’t even be there.

Ai: But these elements coexist.
Gao: Yes, they do. And I need to find a medium that seems emotionless or leaves no emotional traces behind.
Ai: It’s just like making a digression in a conversation.
Gao: Yes. You put an element in abruptly…

Ai: Now let’s talk about this installation of electric fans. I would really like to see the effects of wind in an enclosed space.
Gao: In the black installation, fans are put into a glass case with six sides. If wind blows inside from each side, the center of the case will bear no pressure. The black and white installations with fans were created with no special purpose at all.

Ai: I see. It demonstrated the effect of counteraction.
Gao: Exactly. The installations don’t have any real meaning.
Ai: Is it loud? I mean the black fans.
Gao: The white ones are louder. The black fans only make a low-pitched noise that sound like “wengwengweng...”, as they are put inside a glass case.

Ai: What’re your future plans?
Gao: Well, the most recent plan is to have an exhibition in your gallery...

Ai: Right. Are you feeling excited these days?
Gao: Excited?

Ai: Because you want to have a show very much, or...?
Gao: When I got to know you last year, I was really excited. But now, I am not that excited as I expected. I don’t know… It turns into a project for me now.

Ai: Good. Wish you a smooth exhibition.
Gao: Smooth? I am OK as long as the project does not get cancelled.

Ai: That is the definition of being smooth. What else do you expect?
Gao: When my mind dries up and I can’t come up with any new and interesting ideas, I would call my life “unsmooth”.

Ai: But other things might come up in your life.

Ai: Do you have anything else to say?
Gao: Me? I don’t know. I am not good at this…

Ai: I think this is the most boring interview that I have ever had. Let’s keep it that way.
Gao: Haha, right!

Ai: I think art is a foreign body in your life, as it is entirely “foreign”. You have an urge to create something. But the works don’t really have a function. It’s good. We are on the same page here.