Speaker

Yang Jun

Host

Tang Xiaolin

Introduction

I would like say that I’m not a political or a social activist. I am first and foremost an artist. I might use artistic language for social activism, influence and involvement, but I want to produce things. I want to add, not subtract. I want to create. I take great pleasure in the act of creation. I also want to criticise, comment and have influence. As an artist I both hope and imagine that I can change things, that my work can make an impact. And I think that, even if this claim is naive and  romantic, such an aspiration gives us artists—and maybe all of us—a chance to think and dream about how society and the world could be. Without this naivety and  utopian belief I would not have become an artist.