The Cultural Narrative of the Olympic Games - Sochi 2014

The cultural narrative of the Olympic Games Ceremonies, Cultural Olympiads and Look of the Games as platforms to project the host city and nation BEATRIZ GARCIA Head of Research at the Institute of Cultural Capital, University of Liverpool, member of the IOC Research Selection Committee, Editor of Culture @ the Olympics (www.culturalolympics.org.uk) and author of ‘The Olympic Games and Cultural Policy’ (Routledge, 2012) and ‘The Olympics. The Basics’ (Routledge, 2012)

Introduction

The Olympic Games is recognized worldwide as the largest sports mega-event – certainly the event attracting the largest amount of media coverage globally. However, beyond a sports event, the Olympics is also a cultural phenomenon that can have considerable influence over local, national and international cultural narratives of place. This cultural dimension tends to be represented by the media via popular ceremonial events, such as the Olympic Torch Relay that precedes the start of the Games, and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

However, beyond these highly recognized aspects, the Games also incorporate a cultural and arts programme, the Cultural Olympiad, that is playing a growing role defining or contributing to the projection of respective Olympic host cities via the showcase of local culture and the reinforcement (or change) of cultural values. Further, every Games is framed by a visual design programme (‘The Look of the Games’) which plays an important role setting the tone and feel of public spaces and sporting venues, and can be determinant in creating a unique atmosphere that is representative of the cultural aspirations of respective hosts.

This article reviews the function, development and achievements of Opening and Closing ceremonies, the Cultural Olympiad and the Look of the Games programmes as the three most significant contributors to a Games host cultural narrative.

The Ceremonies are the most globally noticed moment for Olympic cultural representation t hough is produced and consumed mainly as a broadcast phenomenon and

it requires simplification and adhering to some narrow conventions in order to be appreciated by widely diverse audiences worldwide. In contrast, the Cultural Olympiad caters almost exclusively to the local population (before Games time) and the live Olympic audience (during Games time), while remaining nearly invisible to the global media and its remote audience. Finally, the Look of the Games is both pervasive in the global media presentation of the Games and the local lived experience and, depending on how it has been conceived, can be a powerful platform to project the host cultural narrative or, alternatively, run the risk of eliminating local distinctiveness. All of these dimensions have important contributions to make but, if operating in isolation from each other, their contributions are partial and tend to succeed only in specific areas and for particular constituencies while failing to address others.

The article concludes with a reflection about what could make these programmes more effective as central components of the Games experience.

Examples about the possibilities – and challenges – encountered by the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games are explored throughout.

Opening and Closing Ceremonies

Opening and Closing Ceremonies are the most visible aspect of the Olympic Games and the most widely recognised representation of its cultural dimension. They have become the key exemplar of the Games global outreach, attracting est i mated si multa neous telev ision

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The Ceremonies are the most globally noticed moment for Olympic cultural representation though is produced and consumed mainly as a broadcast phenomenon and it requires simplification and adhering to some narrow conventions in order to be appreciated by widely diverse audiences worldwide Photo: Alexei Kudenko/RIA Novosti

audiences of two to three billion people in all the nations that compete at the Games. Much has been written about the role of Ceremonies in offering a platform for symbolic re-enactments of national identity as well as a platform to showcase Olympic values. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is aware of their symbolic and cultural significance, the Opening event in particular, and has developed detailed guidelines to ensure a continuum within their underlying Olympic narrative as well as provide space for the showcase of distinct local and national narratives.

The narrative of the Games as expression of a century-old ‘Movement’ is brought to the fore in the sections prescribed by the IOC as part of the Olympic protocol and include the ‘parade of participants’, speeches by Olympic authorities, the playing of the Olympic anthem, the entry and raising of the Olympic flag, the last stage of the Olympic torch relay and lighting of the Olympic cauldron, the ‘symbolic release of pigeons’ to represent peace, the taking of the Olympic oath by an athlete, a judge and a coach, and playing the national anthem of the host country. All of these elements are strictly regulated by the IOC and documented in detailed manuals. By contrast, the ‘artistic programme’ or cultural showcase section of an Opening Ceremony

is open to each individual host interpretation and has led to a variation of formats over the years.

These range from the most spectacular and showbusiness model, which emphasises the surprise element – the case of Los Angeles in 1984 and the most common emphasis since Barcelona 1992 – to the more traditionally oriented, with a focus on national folklore and cultural identity representation which local audiences can preview in advance and strongly relate to – for instance, Seoul in 1988 and the majority of ceremonies prior to the 1980s. Although most recent Ceremonies try to combine a bit of both extremes, the first model has often prevailed in the last three decades.

While there is no doubt that all Opening Ceremonies, whichever form they may take, can have a dramatic impact in terms of viewing figures and are an opportunity to present a strong message about the host city and nation, their capacity to offer both a locally meaningful and internationally understood cultural narrative is often contested.

This is due to the difficulty in attaining the right balance between easy-to-grasp but often rootless surprise factors and more meaningful gestures that are however difficult to translate to an international audience. An additional key challenge is the result of the framework that makes this event so

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globally significant in the first place: its complete dependence on global broadcasting imperatives since the mid 1980s.

London in 2012 and Sochi in 2014 offer two very different models of presentation, which also contrast with the monumental approach of Beijing 2008 (the ceremony that achieved the largest scale of operations and that subsequent organisers view as a ‘case apart’, not possible to replicate). London 2012, the first summer Games after Beijing, made it clear that they would not attempt to emphasise scale and that they wanted to avoid a traditional and formal review of British history. Instead, this was the first Opening Ceremony to ever introduce humour as a core part of its plot, ranging from the appearance of well-known comic character Mr Bean as a member of the London Symphony Orchestra playing the soundtrack of the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ and dreaming to cheat in the film’s iconic beach race, to the appearance of Queen Elizabeth II alongside James Bond and the illusion that she arrived to the stadium by jumping from a helicopter.

Other segments celebrated the British National Health Service, a socially-engaged gesture much valued by the British public which was, however, difficult to understand by international audiences.

The approach by Sochi 2014 steered well away from humour and, in the words of its director, Constantin Ernst, focused on the presentation of the ‘best of Russian culture’ that the world could appreciate. The staging of Sochi’s artistic segments stands out as the most ambitious and sophisticated Ceremony of any Olympic Winter Games and one that can be easily placed alongside the best examples of artistic expression of any Olympic Summer Ceremonies. The main accomplishments within Sochi’s ceremony were the precision and sophistication of each of its cultural ‘episodes’, from the first overview of Russian landscapes or ‘Voices of Russia’, passing by the presentation of the highly symbolic Russian Troika as flying horses; the many onion domes of St Basil’s cathedral in the form of helium inflatables; the high-tech projection of Peter the Great arriving on a gigantic projected ship; the stylised ballet representation of ‘Natasha Rostova’s First Ball’ from the novel War and Peace; and, most distinctively, the constructivist avantgarde art look given to the Russian Revolution, followed by what could be seen as the most stylish conveyance of the Soviet era ever depicted, relying on architectural and urban planning achievements in striking red, black and white colours as a unifying thread. Beyond the artistic segments, the ‘symbolic

release of doves’ section, which is a requirement by the IOC since 19201, also offered an original take, using the world renowned score of Swan Lake as inspiration for a dance involving prima ballerina Diana Vishneva and a corps the ballet performing as both doves and individual feathers to end up forming a single large dove of peace.

Tellingly, however, the excellence of all these segments was overshadowed by discussion about a technical failure within the Olympic Rings segment, where a snowflake failed to open up and become one of the five Olympic rings. Despite the fact that this was one of the simplest technical segments within the Ceremony, and the fact that it did not have particular significance within the overarching story the hosts hoped to tell, this is what most international media chose to lead on in their Ceremony reviews. This is indicative of the particular set of conventions surrounding an Opening Ceremony, where both long established and more recent symbolic gestures about the Olympic Movement at large, no matter how basic in their form or content, gain greater prominence than any intended subtlety and original insights into the individual host culture. This unavoidable fact, which speaks to the role of the Ceremonies as a ‘cover page’ for the Games and a moment to create images that the Olympic Movement can reappropriate for their long-term purposes, explains why it is important to appreciate the role of other less-known and less-mediated cultural dimensions, such as the official cultural programme or Cultural Olympiad, which plays a very important function during the Games fortnight, after the Opening Ceremony is over and before the Closing Ceremony offers a final ‘wrap-up’. This is discussed in the following section.

At this point in the article, however, it is relevant to reflect on the role of the Closing Ceremony as, for Sochi 2014, it played a defining role to complete the narrative of the Games. The Sochi Closing Ceremony offered an original and surprising moment, as it gave the organisers the chance to re-take the Olympic Rings ‘failure’ moment (which had been trending prominently on Twitter internationally as #ringfail) and re-invent it as a cool quirk of the 2014 Olympics. To the surprise of audiences and media alike, the Closing Ceremony started with a segment involving glittering dancers who eventually formed the five rings, including one that was slower to open (forming exactly the same image that had been a cause of embarrassment in the Opening Ceremony) but eventually caught up

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The staging of Sochi’s artistic segments stands out as the most ambitious and sophisticated Ceremony of any Olympic Winter Games and one that can be easily placed alongside the best examples of artistic expression of any Olympic Summer Ceremonies Photo: Alexander Wilf/ RIA Novosti

with the rest, thus showing the complete five rings as a mark of the end of the Sochi 2014 journey.

Beyond this amusing gesture, the Closing Ceremony played an important role expanding on an ever more sophisticated cultural narrative of Russia, this time presented through the eyes of a Western European (Italian theatre director Daniele Finzi Pasca) to prove that, in the Director’s words, even if many people may not be aware of it, “Russia is under the skin of all Europeans”2 and is at the heart of universal cultural referents, from literature, to dance, music and classic popular entertainment such as the circus. Constantin Ernst added that if the Opening Ceremony was a “blockbuster”, the Closing was an “arthouse experience” which would take the audiences deeper into Russian artistic sensitivity with an explicit celebration of its leading icons, from world-renowned institutions such as the Bolshoi and Mariinski theatres to its creators across the artforms, such as Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Rachmanninoff or Chagall.

Most of the themes and iconic figures listed above were aimed predominantly at impressing an

international audience. But a Closing Ceremony is also a time to share emotions with the local population as a primary target, as this is the time to say good-bye and thank those who have committed years of their lives to make the Games possible.

The Sochi organisers gave some careful thought to this dimension and decided to build on the nostalgia surrounding Moscow 1980, an Olympic Games which had created some iconic moments of its own, passed on from a Russian generation to the next. In this sense, again, in stark contrast with the light pop-music and celebrities approach taken by London 2012 – which avoided direct reminiscences of its previous Games, post-war London 1948 – Sochi brought back the sound and feel of the most emotional and beloved moment of the previous Russian Olympic Games, with a tribute to the mascot Misha and the shedding of a single tear while extinguishing the flame.

In sum, the Closing Ceremony, even if it does not tend to attract the same degree of international media attention as the Opening Ceremony (for instance, in 2014, it was not broadcast in Spain nor

1

From 1920 to 1988 the release of doves was real, but this was replaced by symbolic doves after several doves got burned in the Olympic cauldron during the Seoul 1988 Opening Ceremony.

2 Quote from Daniele Finzi Pasca, speaking at the Closing Ceremony Press Conference (Main Press Centre, 23 February 2014).

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in many of the countries that lagged behind on the medal count) it has a crucial role to play wrapping up the story, tying dots together and, particularly, connecting emotionally with the local and national population.

We turn now on to the Cultural Olympiad, as this is the programme that must keep the narrative going throughout the 16 days of sport-dominated discussions and it is the only programme that allows a long-term nationwide build-up (four years preGames) and a sensitive follow-up to the Olympic experience (in the case of London as well as Sochi, by acting as a direct link with the subsequent Paralympic Games).

Cultural Olympiads

The notion of a specific programme of cultural and artistic events taking place in parallel to the sporting competitions was part of the original vision for the Olympic Games as a blend of sport, culture and education. Baron Pierre de Coubertin established the principle of ‘Olympic Art Competitions’ at a special congress in Paris in 1906, and the first official programme was presented during the 1912 Games in Stockholm. These competitions were also named the ‘Pentathlon of the Muses’, as their purpose was to bring artists to present their work and compete for ‘art’ medals across five categories: architecture, music, literature, sculpture and painting. The main vision behind such concept was to ensure that the Games acted as a platform to bring together the different dimensions of human excellence, and ensure that athletes, artists and intellectuals could be mutually inspired, as was reported to be the case during the Ancient Games in Greece.

The Olympic cultural programme has evolved significantly over the last one hundred years and, although it has always struggled to attract Most people’s experience of cultural activities during Games time is based on what takes place in the street Photo: Nina Zotina/ RIA Novosti

media attention, it has proved to be an important addition to the Olympic experience, particularly for the local population and for national artists and cultural institutions hoping to ensure they contribute to the Games narrative. The Olympic Art Competition model was, however, interrupted after the 1948 Games in London, in part due to the fact that it had become too complex to judge fairly cultural expressions from the ever-growing number and diversity of national delegations 3. This was replaced by Olympic Art Exhibitions and Festivals, which started as an accompaniment to the sporting fortnight, but grew in ambition to last several months or over a year in some cases. Mexico 1968 offers the most ambitious example of all up to that time, as it presented the first year-long national and international Cultural Olympiad. The term Cultural Olympiad was used profusely in Mexico but it did not become a reality until Barcelona 1992, which was the first to offer an actual ‘Olympiad’ (lasting four-years) of cultural programming connecting the end of one Games with the beginning of the next.

This approach has been retained ever since in all the Olympic Summer Games, and was applied to the Olympic Winter Games by Vancouver 2010 for the first time, followed by Sochi 2014, which is the second Olympic Winter Games to deliver a full fouryear Cultural Olympiad.

The vision behind a Cultural Olympiad tells a lot about the aspirations of the cultural elites of respective host countries. While Barcelona 1992 wanted to use the Games as a platform to project democratic Spain and tell the story of Catalunya as a distinct nation with its own language and traditions away from the better-known Spanish folklore of flamenco and bull-fighting, London 2012 wanted to ensure its cultural narrative was that of a world city not bound by specific national boundaries and focused on transversal concepts such as youth, innovation and the breaking of boundaries – in particular, breaking perceived barriers to excellence within the disability arts movement with pioneering programmes such as Unlimited, which has been passed on to the Rio 2016 Games as a key Olympic and Paralympic cultural legacy. This resulted in a very different kind of cultural programme, which highlighted hybrid art forms and the use of unusual environments for art

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The Sochi Closing Ceremony offered an original and surprising moment, as it gave the organisers the chance to re-take the Olympic Rings ‘failure’ moment (which had been trending prominently on Twitter internationally as #ringfail) and re-invent it as a cool quirk of the 2014 Olympics.

Photo: Maxim Bogodvid/ RIA «Novosti»

expressions over traditional cultural venues. As such, most of the key highlights of London’s cultural programme took place away from theatres and concert halls, to occupy instead large landscapes, the facades of buildings, transport hubs and virtual environments4.

Sochi 2014 started its Cultural Olympiad in 2010, and dedicated each year to a different theme, from the year of Cinema (2010) to the year of Theatre (2011), Music (2012) and Museums (2013).

In 2014, the Cultural Olympiad has taken place in Sochi and around Games venues exclusively and involves a range of strands, including a high-end international artistic programme focused on classic art forms such as ballet, music concerts, opera and fine arts exhibitions (the Winter Arts Festival) to celebrations in the popular Live Sites and Olympic Park, with a focus on regional Russian folk troupes and pop bands.

The Cultural Olympiad has strong visibility within Sochi city centre which, in contrast with previous Games hosts, does not have any

sporting venue as they are all concentrated in the neighbouring Olympic Park or the mountains. This means that the city’s festival atmosphere is entirely the result of its cultural, rather than sporting offering, and this makes the cultural programme even more relevant and looked after than has been the case in many previous editions.

Understandably, most people’s experience of cultural activities during Games time is based on what takes place in the street and, for this, it is essential to ensure that public avenues and squares are dressed for the occasion and have some entertainment and culture on offer. The Live Sites play a core role in this respect, but museums and art galleries also play a key part to set the tone. A distinctive outcome of the lack of sporting venues in the city centre is the fact that the city signalisation system, created in line with all other Games venues signposts, makes a special emphasis on its cultural and educational venues, so that no Olympic visitor can miss where the core museums, theatres and concert halls are located. This is in high contrast

3

The most important reason at the time was, however, concern about the fact that well-known artists were considered professionals while, at that point, all Olympic participants were expected to be amateurs and gain no monetary reward for their activity.

4 See Garcia, B. (2013) London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Evaluation. London: Arts Council England (http://www.beatrizgarcia.net/?portfolio=london2012-cultural-olympiad-2) .

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Sochi offers a clear statement about the Games host and makes all Games-related items part of a very distinct Sochi 2014 narrative that corresponds with the overarching Games cultural vision of a ‘new’ (or renewed) contemporary Russia

Photo: Alexander Wilf/ RIA Novosti

with the majority of Games-time signposting systems, including London, as traditional art and cultural venues tend to become invisible to give way for the new layers of Olympic related information.

In London, visitors were expected to know about the British Museum, the National Art Gallery or Tate Gallery, but these sites were not marked within the freely distributed Games-time city guides nor included in any of the brightly coloured Olympic information signs, even in the cases when they were offering high profile Cultural Olympiad programming.

The Winter Arts Festival in 2014 is Sochi’s version of what other Games have termed the Olympic Arts Festival and has taken place mainly within the Winter Theatre and Organ Hall in the city centre and the Galaxy Concert Hall in Krasnaya Polyana by the mountain sporting venues. As such, while London aimed to ensure that the street was a priority space for high-end art interventions, Sochi has focused on its traditional indoor venues to present Russia’s most high profile artists and a selection of international guests across established artforms such as music, theatre, ballet, cinema and fine arts.

The other key aspect of the Cultural Olympiad is the cultural offering within the Olympic Park.

London made a distinct stance by investing on a high-concept public art programme, unprecedented in any Games, where the art was integral to the park experience, from the way flowers where arranged to the paint tones of water bridge columns, ceramic coverings for utility building facades and the inclusion of poetry in walls to cover water pipes and electrical supply hubs. Sochi has focused on providing crowd entertainment, by bringing the most highly acclaimed folk troupes from around Russia to perform throughout the park as well as in the Medals Plaza and within a large purpose-built Russian Regions Exhibition space.

Overall, organisers claim that 3 million people have engaged with Cultural Olympiad activities since the programme started in 2010 with activity coming from 83 regions across Russia (70 in 2014 alone), including a ‘Russian Regions Marathon’ and a national children competition (‘Class of Peace’), the winners of which are presenting their work in Sochi during the Games. Out of this experience, perhaps the most important legacy will be the

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emphasis, for the first time in Russia, on bringing performers with disabilities and showcasing their work in prominent stages and open environments.

500 such performers have been included in the cultural programme so far and they will feature even more prominently during the Paralympic Games in March 2014. Further, the Winter Arts Festival has played a very important role in the repositioning of Sochi as a sophisticated international cultural centre and prominent winter resort, which was one of the key aspirations of the original Sochi 2014 bid.

The Festival can be viewed as a key Olympic legacy, as it has become well established since its inception in 2007 and will outlast the Games.

However, in line with the experience at previous Games, it is unlikely that much of this activity features on international media stories about the Games. This may be accentuated by the fact that information on the most high-profile artistic events within the Winter Art Festival has been presented in Russian exclusively but, as discussed extensively in the academic literature, regardless of the language barriers, it is commonly accepted that Games-time international journalists do not follow cultural (and, particularly, arts-related) stories as they focus instead on the sport or, at most, a selection of economic and political angles. In this context, the best chance for the local culture of the host to infiltrate international media reporting once the Opening Ceremony is over and the focus move on to sporting competitions is in the design concept for Games venues, the so-called Look of the Games programme.

The Look of the Games

The most accessible and pervasive form of cultural expression during the Olympic fortnight is the actual ‘Look of the Games’, which as become a distinct programme in its own right. Mexico 1968 was the first Games to create a widely recognisable look unique to the Games, and it remains, with Munich 1972, the best example of an approach to Games design which is also clearly rooted on sophisticated cultural and artistic expression unique to the particular host. Mexico 1968 presented its city and sport venue-dressing programme as part of the Cultural Olympiad (something that has not been repeated since) and it did so with the purpose to promote ‘peace’ as well as assist the crowds find their way to venues throughout the city.

Since then, the programme has become highly professionalised and is an essential part of the staging of the Games. However, it has often lost its ability to act as a platform for cultural

Mexico 1968 was the first Games to create a widely recognisable look unique to the Games, and it remains, with Munich 1972, the best example of an approach to Games design which is also clearly rooted on sophisticated cultural and artistic expression unique to the particular host Composit by Beatriz Garcia from images available online

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representation to, instead, bring Olympic cities a standardised look that make them feel like ‘nonplaces’ – in a similar way to what happens in large international airports, they become efficient and clearly signalled environments where people can go from A to B, but lose any feel of what it is to be in a particular country, be it Australia, Greece, China or the US. Further, the Look of the Games programme has been at risk of losing its edge as an area for creative expression and innovation, instead offering a design formula that gets replicated again and again with minimal token gestures to offer a local flavour. The similarities between the official Games look of Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, and Beijing 2008 are a case in point in high contrast with the uniquely rooted look of Mexico or Munich.

London tried another approach – in part to minimise costs, but also in following with the 2012 Games ‘innovation’ and ‘youth-focused’ overarching cultural narrative. The result was a look that steered away from the emerging standardised formula of previous Games, even if it did not offer a very clear ‘UK’ flavour. Sochi 2014 offers yet another interesting example, as the decision has been to project a very distinctly Russian folk look based in patchwork, tapestry and mosaic imagery, using traditional Russian craft examples from different regions around the country as a basis.

The combination of colours, folk theme and stylised design is effective as a Games Look that can help audiences, athletes, officials and media to quickly identify relevant venues and people to speak to. At the same time, it communicates a strong message of a diverse and culturally advanced modern Russia.

Without being as avant-garde as Mexico and Munich were at the time, Sochi offers all the same an interesting middle-point or alternative to the tired formula that had become popular since 2000. While not losing any of its core requirement as an easy to identify and adapt look for venues, city signage, uniforms and all related Games merchandise, it offers also a clear statement about the Games host and makes all Games-related items part of a very distinct Sochi 2014 narrative that corresponds with the overarching Games cultural vision of a ‘new’ (or renewed) contemporary Russia.

Conclusions

An Olympic Games cultural narrative is composed of many different pieces that may or may not join up into a memorable core concept and may succeed or fail in communicating a message in tune with the desires of the host nation. This is

very much dependent on the capacity of organisers to orchestrate their cultural story in a way that effectively links the large-scale global spectacle and ‘wow factor’ of Opening and Closing ceremonies, with the opportunities for complexity, detail and intimacy offered by the Cultural Olympiad and the pervasive look and feel emerging out of the Games core visual design programme. Each of these components play a distinct role and appeal to local, national and international media and their audiences in different ways at different points in time.

Traditionally, the Opening Ceremony is the moment attracting greatest attention but the one that can be most easily misunderstood or dismissed if there are any technical faults or the appointed (often sporting rather than culturally-informed) journalists fails to grasp any deeply rooted cultural meaning. In contrast, the Cultural Olympiad is the best platform for subtlety, diverse cultural representation and direct local engagement, but it struggles to find a place within the Games global narrative as it does not easily infiltrate the mood (or actual physical space) of sporting venues.

In Sochi, there have been opportunities for cultural advancement in most fronts, and it is fair to say that the programmes have managed to project a refreshed image of Russia today. The Ceremonies felt sophisticated rather than just folkloric and managed to avoid a feeling of ‘nationalism’, which was appreciated by foreign reporters; the Cultural Olympiad has created a good balance between world-class offerings in established art venues and popular traditions on the street and has offered a long-overdue platform to artists with disabilities; finally, the Look of the Games has managed to convey a distinct Russian feel while fulfilling its crowd-orientation role. The sporting competitions and excellence achieved by the athletes are of course the main focus of an Olympic Games.

However, without a broader cultural context, the added-value provided by the local host becomes invisible and this diminishes the meaningfulness of the Games experience and its legacy. Ceremonies, Cultural Olympiad and Look of the Games have an important story to tell, and this story is what locates sporting achievement in a unique time and place that is memorable to both national and international audiences and contributes to changing or refining the global perception of the Games host.

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