A Room of My Own: Study of Perspective

Changing the World One Haiku at a Time Series


A Haiku Set for Ai Weiwei, China's Most Influential Artist / Dangerous Man (Whose perspective is it anyway ?)

What the hell is art?

Ai Weiwei

in the cooking pot
(reprinted on Pen Canada)

sunlight on the photo:

his middle finger

against Tiananmen Square

Note: Below is excerpted from the latest  Spiegel Interview with Ai Weiwei:

SPIEGEL: What's wrong with China's education system? According to the OECD's most recent Pisa study, an international ranking of education systems, students in Shanghai are the world's best in arithmetic, natural sciences and in reading.

Ai Weiwei: I think our system is hollow and empty. Let's talk about humanity, individualism, imagination and creativity -- those are the values a society is built on. What education are we getting, what dreams do we dream? I deal with students every day -- from China, Germany, the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And I've noticed that the Chinese students are the least trained in having a sense of aesthetics. They lack any ability to sense what is beautiful or what is proper. They can be learned and skillful, but they lack the ability to make their own free judgment. It is really sad to see young adults of 20, 25 years who were never taught to make their own decisions. People who can't do that don't get a sense of responsibility. And if you lack a sense of responsibility, you push the blame onto the system.