{"id":128729,"date":"2020-01-21T14:30:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T13:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2020\/01\/21\/ai-weiwei-on-his-new-life-in-the-uk-people-are-at-least-polite-in-germany-they-werent\/"},"modified":"2020-01-21T14:30:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T13:30:01","slug":"ai-weiwei-on-his-new-life-in-the-uk-people-are-at-least-polite-in-germany-they-werent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=128729","title":{"rendered":"Ai Weiwei on his new life in the UK: &#039;People are at least polite. In Germany, they weren&#039;t&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Devastated by his time in Germany, which he regards as still Nazi, the artist has moved. As he unveils a powerful virtual reality artwork, he talks about needing a monster to fight \u2013 and why he\u2019d like to be a barberExperience Ai Weiwei\u2019s virtual reality artwork Omni\u2018When we filmed this,\u201d says Ai Weiwei, \u201cthe elephants didn\u2019t know what to do.\u201d The artist is talking about the groundbreaking documentary he has just made about unemployed logging elephants in Myanmar. You watch the film, shot with 360-degree virtual reality technology, through a special headset. Turn your head slowly and your view gradually changes. Turn your head 180 degrees and the picture changes completely.\u201cOnce they were used for labour,\u201d he goes on, \u201cand now they have lost their job. And when they lost their job, each elephant had a few people to take care of it, so those people also lost their job.\u201d Ai (Weiwei is his first name and means unknown or future) relates to the elephants and their handlers as readily as he does to the subject of the second part of his mesmerising VR project \u2013 this one about the lives of Rohingya refugees in a Bangladeshi camp. Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2020\/jan\/21\/ai-weiwei-on-his-new-life-in-britain-germany-virtual-reality-film\" target=\"_blank\">Ai Weiwei on his new life in the UK: &#039;People are at least polite. In Germany, they weren&#039;t&#039;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devastated by his time in Germany, which he regards as still Nazi, the artist has moved. As he unveils a powerful virtual reality artwork, he talks about needing a monster to fight \u2013 and why he\u2019d like to be a barberExperience Ai Weiwei\u2019s virtual reality artwork Omni\u2018When we filmed this,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}