“Antiques exist as evidence of the cultural tracks we made in the past.”

— Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Antiques exist as evidence of the cultural tracks we made in the past." by Ai Weiwei?

Ai Weiwei 218

Chinese concept artist 1957

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 33; as cited in Lee (2001, p. 58)

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

The Opening to the Future http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/01/20/06-08-1964.pdf (1964)
Context: To say that the future will be different from the present is, to scientists, hopelessly self-evident. I observe regretfully that in politics, however, it can be heresy. It can be denounced as radicalism, or branded as subversion. There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed. It hardly seems necessary to point out in California - of all States -- that change, although it involves risks, is the law of life.

“Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

The Precession of Simulcra, Ramses, or the Rosy-Colored Resurrection
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

“A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)
Context: A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written.

“Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By Any Means Necessary (1970)