Interview: Alison Klayman on getting to know Ai Weiwei

poptech:

Alison Klayman is a freelance journalist and documentarian currently finishing a film about the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Ai is one of China’s most well-known and controversial artists, and in recent years has produced a body of work that is often highly critical of the Chinese government. In April 2010, Ai Weiwei was detained by Chinese authorities and held for nearly three months with virtually no contact with the outside world — an event that spurred much international criticism directed at the Chinese government. Klayman’s documentary, titledNever Sorry, tracks Ai’s life and work during the period Klayman was in China between 2006-2010. Klayman plans to debut Never Sorry in 2012 on the international film festival circuit.

PopTech: When you began shooting Ai Weiwei, did you have a sense of how you wanted to tell his story?
Alison Klayman: I really wanted to do a good job of letting people get to know him as a person. Through him you get to know so much about where China’s been and where it’s going. For me, it was about how he was finding his ways to express himself and how other people in China were responding to it. So it was a story about the diversity of opinion in China. To take one person, get to know him on a human level, and through that, start to appreciate that China was not a monolithic place at all.

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Do you live by any rules?

That’s what Rafael Rozendaal asked the two members of AIDS-3D for their one question interview. Here’s their response:

AIDS-3D’s CURRENT GUIDELINES:

- We have a generalized distrust of institutions and their conventions.
- We believe in the sharpest possible distinguishment of ones self.
- We believe that the digital revolution is still transforming humanity and that we must always be the vanguard of this revolution.
- We believe in a fluid and undefined sexuality based on the ability to virtually sublimate any desire online.
- We believe that drugs are cool but not as cool as we all wished they are.
- We believe in wearing thick wool socks in the summer as well as the winter.
- We believe in trying to eat a different style of ethnic food every day of the week. (this is a balanced diet)
- We believe in maintaining a fashionable silhouette at all times.
- We believe in a completely free worldwide market.
- We believe that intellectual property is problematic, but we also respect that profit remains the biggest incentive for new developments.
- We always vote for Democrats, but only because we’re pragmatists.
- We believe that usually its best to only wear one pattern at a time.
- We are members of a dynamic international community.
- We are proud to be Americans because we invented black music, hollywood, public relations, and the internet!
- We believe there is no such thing as selling out as long you are still spreading your ideas.
- We believe that proactive ego-force can effect change on a global scale.
- We want to believe in Oprah’s Secret.
- We believe in dancing.
- We don’t share girls anymore.
Smoke weed every day

You may have already seen AIDS-3D’s flaming bluetooth symbol. They were also in that “Younger Than Jesus” group show at the New Museum last Spring/Summer.