Why art must retake Olympic stage
Rio managed to show off its plumage despite its official cultural programme being shelved
Rio was the first summer Olympic host city since Barcelona 1992 not to host a four-year Cultural Olympiad. Has anyone noticed?
The Cultural Olympiad, or official Olympics cultural programme, is probably one of the less valued dimensions of the Games. Despite its 104-year history, organisers have struggled to fund it, the media have been reluctant to cover it and the public has generally ignored it.
Despite this, as is well known by connoisseurs of the art world in places as diverse as Los Angeles, Sydney, Torino and London, much has been achieved by artists and cultural entrepreneurs in past Games. And after 2016, in the wake o f t h e a mb i t i o u s A g e n d a 2 0 2 0 — a road map to the future of the Olympic movement under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) — much more is expected from art and cultural interventions during and between Olympics editions.
Rio 2016 was meant to focus its cultural programming efforts on the yearlong countdown to the Games and the months thereafter. Its culture programme, titled Celebra, was meant to achieve this with popup events, flash mobs and microfestivals. But the dramatic cuts to Brazil’s culture budget had a direct effect on the already vulnerable Celebra team.
Unlike other culture-related Games programmes, such as the high-profile opening and closing ceremonies or the torch relay, the Cultural Olympiad has never counted on a protected budget and its operational framework is not defined within the Olympic host city contract. In Rio, this led to the programme being sidelined. Instead, the fortnight of cultural activity was led by separate bodies operating outside the organising committee, under no common umbrella.
#OlympicArt blooms on sidelines
So, what did art and culture at the Rio 2016 Olympics look like? From Rio residents’ perspective, the bulk of cultural programming was seen in the streets.
Rio’s boulevards took on the tradition of hosting “live sites” (large open-air screens to broadcast the Olympic events for non-ticket holders), but also incorporated culture and street art. The largest, at the newly regenerated Porto Maravilhas, is set to become the main urban cultural legacy of the Games, linking to a new museum dedicated to “tomorrow” and a new art museum with some of the best views in the city.
T h e mu s e u ms w e r e o v e r s u b - scribed throughout the Games, and up to four million people (according to the city’s tourism department) packed Porto Maravilhas over the Olympic fortnight. Monumental high-concept graffiti covering previously derelict warehouses is contributing to the attractiveness of an area that a year ago was considered no-go, dangerous and abandoned.
At another end of the spectrum is the IOC’s first artist-in-residence programme. This programme, w h i c h s p o n s o r e d a n e me r g i n g American artist, an established German writer and the French artist JR, is unprecedented and should boost the Cultural Olympiad’s visibility and relevance.
For the best part of the past 30 years — ever since a global Olympic marketing framework was set up — it has been difficult to offer platforms for artists and cultural institutions at Games time. Branding conflicts, disagreements over how the term “Olympic” can be used and long-established suspicions from the arts world meant that few truly successful collaborations have taken place in recent years.
But this year, international media have been keen to cover the work of French artist JR in particular. His three “giants”, propped on top of buildings and emerging out of the water, are a homage to those athletes that could not make it to the Games but deserve to be noticed. The work is effective in conveying “Olympic values” while retaining credibility as pieces of art — and making a visual impact.
And InsideOut, another JR intervention, worked wonders in the Olympic city, representing thousands of people, from residents to athletes, in enlarged portraits covering the walls and floors of the Maracana Stadium, Olympic Village and Boulevard Olimpico.
The artists-in-residence experiment is considered to have been a success, despite mixed levels of awareness in Rio itself. An expectation is being raised that art has a role to play at the Olympics — and the response from the arts and design world, as well as those mainstream media that noticed, has been positive.
Towards a more arts-friendly Tokyo
In the aftermath of the Games, after a well-received closing ceremony that didn’t shy away from high-art concepts, the overall feeling is one of achievement, despite the dissipation of the original programme, Celebra. The city’s artistic offering was not as diverse, well promoted and nationally representative as originally intended, but the boulevards and artist residencies have given the Games a valuable arts and cultural edge.
The baton has now been handed to Tokyo, a city that has been making strong cultural statements since its bid stage and has proven them throughout its time in Rio. This included the Japan House, dedicated to showcasing Japanese culture, and the Tokyo House, which focused on contemporary art manifestations. Tokyo 2020 seems determined to push the Cultural Olympiad back to centre stage, and will launch its official arts programme in October.
The Rio 2016 organisers delivered their Games without a formal Olympic cultural programme. Without protected cultural budgets and despite endless political, economic and environmental challenges, the city proved capable of throwing a big party — and leaves valuable new public spaces to continue them. But waiving a Cultural Olympiad also meant that many of the inspiring interventions taking place were missed by most residents.
Sustainable creative legacies cannot just build on a good party but require strategic, ambitious and consistently promoted cultural programming.
If Tokyo is ready to put strategic thinking and resources behind its cultural programme now that the IOC is equally keen to push for a more ambitious artist-led agenda, this may finally be the time to put #OlympicArt on the map, prove the sceptics wrong and renew and advance some of the more tired aspects of the Games staging process.
The Olympic Games cannot be fully successful and ensure strong and distinct cultural legacies without an equally ambitious cultural programme. It is time this retakes the stage and is allowed to operate as a core and deserving Olympic ambition, not just as something loitering behind the scenes.