«Fairytale» is my favorite work in DOCUMENTA 12.
Ai Weiwei, Installation view of Fairytale, at documenta 12, 2007
Housing space for the visitors from China
Courtesy documenta GmbH, Kassel and Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, Lucerne
Sponsored by Erlenmeyer Foundation, Switzerland and Leister Foundation, Switzerland
Photo: Frank Schinski © Frank Schinski and documenta GmbH, Kassel
There are some nice documentation and interview 1/ 2 about «Fairytale».
AW: I grew up in Xinjiang within a hardcore communist society — we got all our education in labor camps. Today, it’s a very different time; the development of political, economic, and technical systems has brought us to a completely new age.
At the same time, I think the old systems and power structures, based on the old thinking, are still here — especially in China, but also in the West. I believe that personal awareness and experience is absolutely essential for social change; that change should be based on an individual confrontation with reality.
When documenta asked me to do a project, I really wanted to do this exercise, Fairytale, of bringing 1,001 people to the event as a kind of disruptive intervention. It wasn’t a specific commentary on documenta — any other show or fair still operates within the old framework of thought. This way of presenting [art], the kind of communication, who’s doing what, how it’s received — it’s all based on the old structure. My project draws from personal effort and results in an individual engagement, no matter who the viewer is — somebody who’s art-savvy or somebody who doesn’t know art at all, but is just willing to have contact with this experience.
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