Cai Guo-Qiang Looks to Make a Bang Beyond Art World

Vice interviewed Cai Guo-Qiang as the Netflix documentary of his Sky Ladder premiered over the weekend:

Sky Ladder, the work documented in the film, was a project that you failed multiple times trying to complete. What exactly happened?

In the beginning, I didn’t expect at all that there would be a failure. I had already accomplished many great projects that were part of the explosion events, such as Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10 (1993), or Earth Has Its Black Hole Too: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 16 (1994). But during my first attempt at Sky Ladder in Bath, England in 1994, the aviation company told me that I needed a permit, otherwise flights would crash into the balloon. It was perfectly fine otherwise, but I could not do it at that time. Later on I obtained the permit and they said that I could attempt the project at a certain time on a certain day, but then it was raining too hard to attempt it on that day. It was then that I realized Sky Ladder was not an easy thing to complete.