NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� , the Chinese artist and dissident who believes it his job to be 鈥渋ncorrect,鈥� was hard at work Tuesday night during an appearance at The Town Hall in Manhattan.
鈥淚 really like to make trouble,鈥� Ai said during a 50-minute conversation-sparring match with author-interviewer Mira Jacob, during which he was as likely to question the question as he was to answer it. The event was presented by PEN America, part of the literary and free expression organization's PEN Out Loud series.
Ai was in New York to discuss his new book, the graphic memoir 鈥淶odiac,鈥� structured around the animals of the Chinese zodiac, with additional references to cats. The zodiac has wide appeal with the public, he said, and it also serves as a useful substitute for asking someone their age; you instead ask for one's sign.
鈥淣o one would be offended by that,鈥� he said.
Ai began the night in a thoughtful, self-deprecating mood, joking about when he adopted 40 cats, a luxury forbidden during his childhood, and wondered if one especially attentive cat wasn鈥檛 an agent for 鈥渢he Chinese secret police.鈥� Cats impress him because they barge into rooms without shutting the door behind them, a quality shared by his son, he noted.
鈥淶odiac鈥� was published this week by Ten Speed Press and features illustrations by Gianluca Costantini. The book was not initiated by him, Ai said, and he was to let others do most of the work.
鈥淢y art is about losing control,鈥� he said, a theme echoed in 鈥淶odiac.鈥�
He is a visual artist so renowned that he was asked to for the 2008 Summer Olympics, but so much a critic of the Chinese Communist Party that he was jailed three years later for unspecified crimes and has since lived in Portugal, Germany and Britain.
The West can be just as censorious as China, he said Tuesday. Last fall, the Lisson Gallery in London indefinitely postponed a planned Ai exhibition after he tweeted, in response to the , that 鈥淭he sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world. Financially, culturally, and in terms of media influence, the Jewish community has had a significant presence in the United States.鈥�
After Jacobs read the tweet to him, Ai joked, 鈥淵ou sound like an interrogator.鈥�
Ai has since deleted the tweet, and said Tuesday that he thought only in 鈥渁uthoritarian states鈥� could one get into trouble on the internet.
鈥淚 feel pretty sad,鈥� he said, adding that 鈥渨e are all different鈥� and that the need for 鈥渃orrectness,鈥� for a single way of expressing ourselves, was out of place in a supposedly free society.
鈥淐orrectness is a bad end," he said.
Some questions, submitted by audience members and read by Jacobs, were met with brief, off-hand and often dismissive responses, a test of correctness.
Who inspires you, and why?
"You," he said to Jacobs.
Why?
鈥淏ecause you're such a beautiful lady.鈥�
Can one make great art when comfortable?
鈥泪尘辫辞蝉蝉颈产濒别.鈥�
Does art have the power to change a country's politics?
鈥淭hat must be crazy to even think about it.鈥�
Do you even think about change while creating art?
鈥淵ou sound like a psychiatrist.鈥�
What do you wish you had when you were younger?
鈥淣ext question.鈥�
How are you influenced by creating art in a capitalistic society?
鈥淚 don't consider it at all. If I'm thirsty, I drink some water. If I'm sleepy, I take a nap. I don't worry more than that.
If you weren't an artist, what would you be?
鈥淚'd be an artist.鈥�
Hillel Italie, The Associated Press
