Former ambassador Uli Sigg and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recall the cultural atmosphere at the Swiss Embassy in Beijing in the 1990s. In conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, they discuss Ai’s artistic practice, paradigms of Western and Chinese art, eating and napping in Portugal – and their respective relationship to hope.
“If you don’t have hope, you don’t feel hopeless. I never liked the word hope and I never liked the word freedom. I think they are the most empty words that can exist in a conversation.”
— Ai Weiwei
