Culturally, there was great excitement around the Beijing Olympics in 2008. This was a chance for the outside world to witness what we’ve know for some time – that Beijing has a thriving, diverse music and arts scene that is growing year on year.
In the end, however, Beijing was just about the most boring place in the entire world for a 3 month period leading up to August 2008. Nearly every venue was closed for the lead up and duration of the big O – the city was completely locked down to musicians, artists and even brands and national bodies that had been planning for the Olympics for up to 3 years. Damp squib – hell yeah!
Still, Expo will be different, surely? The Olympics was a 2 week period with exclusively sporting content. There have been security disasters at the Olympics before, and so between them, the Beijing authorities and the Olympic Committee decided that a city on red alert was preferable to problems of any kind.
But Expo is all about different countries showcasing the best they have to offer in terms of culture, technology and anything else they want the world to see. The amount of programming that is lined up for Shanghai’s Expo is quite staggering. And most of these artists are expecting/ need to play shows/ exhibit/ engage outside of the official Expo site to make the journey worthwhile. The shows on the Expo site itself will be generally tough – audiences are likely to be guests from the countryside, and not explicit fans (although we hope many will become so), marketing will be hard due to the official noise, and production hacked together. And so, it is apparent that other appearances in Shanghai/ China will be necessary. If Shanghai closes down, then there will be an enormous amount of people with noses out of joint, and empty diaries.
We aren’t making any predictions just yet, but as of last night, things are looking less than stellar. Over at Andy Best’s Kungfuology blog, he draws our attention to a couple of things that may or may not be signs of things to come. Artists being censored (no surprise there) and venues being moved! Check out the article HERE, plus mildly titillating graphics. Go Andy!