Ai Weiwei to make a film on Europe’s refugee crisis

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has described the European refugee situation as a “test for humanity”. Speaking in the Swiss capital Be to promote a collection of contemporary Chinese art, he said his next big project would be a film on the migration issue.

Ai said he had amassed 600 hours of footage for a film due out next year. It includes over 100 interviews with refugees.

“Europe has not been acting as a society which can offer this very essential help or sympathy for those unfortunate people. Which is really a test for our humanity and our human rights conditions. I feel quite surprised how even European nations and communities are divided on these issues and don’t really come up with any sound or acceptable solutions.”

“I think Europe still does have the potential and morally, legally, logistically does have the responsibility to come up with more rational solutions than this.”

The artist is currently based in Berlin, where he is also teaching a class about the refugees’ plight at Berlin University of the Arts. Ai said he had spent the past four months “concentrating on the refugee situation”.

The Chinese govement retued his passport in 2015, allowing him to travel for the first time in several years. He said he had since travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border and various refugee camps in Greece. He currently has a studio on the island of Lesbos.

“I’ve had to catch up and study what other parts of the world are like, to have a balanced view of the world,” he said.

Ai was speaking on Wednesday ahead of a panel discussion with Jacques Herzog of the renowned Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron at Zentrum Paul Klee, where works by Swiss collector Uli Sigg are on show. Sigg is recognised as having the world’s biggest collection of mode Chinese art. A work by Ai is included the exhibition.

Ai noted that his first solo show had taken place in Be in 2004, and described the city as “very special”.

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