Once upon a time, a big book was lying among piles of others on the large wooden table of internationally acclaimed polymath artist, curator, writer, publisher and architect Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing), one of the most complex and influential personalities in the development of Chinese contemporary art for over twenty years.
 
It was a book about space. Ai WeiWei cheerfully showed his guests a quotation by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the pioneering Russian space theorist, printed on one of the first pages:

First inevitably comes the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream.

These words condensed the whole process, conceived as an artwork itself, of the large- scale, multi-faceted project about possibility and imagination that Ai WeiWei presented in summer 2007 at Documenta 12.
 
For Fairytale - 1001 chairs Ai arranged his 1001 Ming & Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs, around the exhibition and recruited 1001 Chinese citizens on the Internet to volunteer to live in Kassel during the show. The work commented on changing the lives of ordinary people by providing them with new social, political, and cultural experiences. Ai said the number 1001 does not have any special meaning, but is just a number easy to remember.

The project itself required enormous financial, organizational, technical and human resources. With a 3.1 million Euro budget, mainly financed by sponsors, Ai WeiWei has merged his dream with reality, creating his own Fairytale.
 
As for the meaning of "fairytale," Ai said it is "a simple desire for happiness."
 
"Fairytale is a work which relates to social, political and cultural aspects," he says.
 
"I don't even care whether it is an artwork."