{"id":167809,"date":"2014-01-16T15:24:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T23:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=167809"},"modified":"2021-09-14T21:21:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T04:21:36","slug":"ai-weiwei-virtual-life-become-real-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/ai-weiwei-virtual-life-become-real-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Ai Weiwei: &#8216;My Virtual Life Has Become My Real Life&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an interview, artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/world\/chinese-artist-ai-weiwei-discusses-efforts-in-china-to-monitor-him-a-943719.html\"><strong>Ai Weiwei spoke to Spiegel about his life under constant surveillance by the Chinese government<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>SPIEGEL:\u00a0What do the people who observe you want to find out, what don&#8217;t they know yet?<\/p>\n<p>Ai:\u00a0A year ago, I got a bit aggressive and pulled the camera off one of them. I took out the memory card and asked him if he was a police officer. He said &#8220;No.&#8221; Then why are you following me and constantly photographing me? He said, &#8220;No, I never did.&#8221; I said, &#8220;OK, go back to your boss and tell him I want to talk to him. And if you keep on following me, then you should be a bit more careful and make sure that I don&#8217;t notice.&#8221; I was really curious to see what he had on that memory card.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;] Ai:\u00a0I was shocked because he had photographed the restaurant I had eaten in the previous day from all angles: every room, the cash till, the corridor, the entrance from every angle, every table. I asked myself: Gosh, why do they have to go to so much trouble? Then there were photos of my driver, first of him sitting on a park bench, then a portrait from the front, a portrait from the back, his shoes, from the left, from the right, then me again, then my stroller.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;] SPIEGEL:\u00a0How do these limitations affect your work?<\/p>\n<p>Ai:\u00a0It doesn&#8217;t really affect me because I work and live in the Internet. My virtual life has become my real life. I was reminded of that again a few days ago: I asked my colleagues to print out everything I&#8217;ve written on Twitter in the past three years. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/world\/chinese-artist-ai-weiwei-discusses-efforts-in-china-to-monitor-him-a-943719.html\"><strong>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Last year, Ai Weiwei produced <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2013\/08\/ai-weiwei-how-to-block-surveillance-cameras\/\">a tutorial on blocking surveillance cameras<\/a>. Click through to read more about <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/china\/ai-weiwei\/\">Ai Weiwei<\/a> via CDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an interview, artist Ai Weiwei spoke to Spiegel about his life under constant surveillance by the Chinese government: SPIEGEL:\u00a0What do the people who observe you want to find out, what don&#8217;t they know yet? Ai:\u00a0A year ago, I got a bit aggressive and pulled the camera off one of them. I took out the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1088,"featured_media":167812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,34,10,14744,14745,14746,100],"tags":[5870,583,8339],"class_list":["post-167809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-human-rights","category-law","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","tag-ai-weiwei","tag-surveillance","tag-twitter","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ai Weiwei: &#039;My Virtual Life Has Become My Real Life&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/ai-weiwei-virtual-life-become-real-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ai Weiwei: &#039;My Virtual Life Has Become My Real Life&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In an interview, artist Ai Weiwei spoke to Spiegel about his life under constant surveillance by the Chinese government: SPIEGEL:\u00a0What do the people who observe you want to find out, what don&#8217;t they know yet? Ai:\u00a0A year ago, I got a bit aggressive and pulled the camera off one of them. 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