On 18 January 2008 the exhibition “Exponentional Future” opened at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.

Among the exhibition’s artwork is a photograph, contribution of artist Alex Morrison, showing three masked men shaking their fists. A huge flag imprinted with the Olympic circles is partly visible in the background.

The photograph became famous in March 2007 when an anti-Olympic group, The Native Warriors, claimed the theft of the huge Olympic flag that had previously been flying at Vancouver City Hall. The claim was published online along with the photograph in question.

The curators of Exponential Future, Scott Watson and Juan Gaitán, were eventually placed in the dilemma of freedom of expression and the fact that the exhibition as part of the Cultural Olympiad was funded by Vanoc.

They decided to inform Vanoc that a potentially Olympics critical photograph will be exhibited and send a letter to each artist making them aware of the exhibition being funded by Vancouver’s Olympic committee, and giving them the opportunity to withdraw.

As a result, Vanoc permitted the exhibition of the challenging photograph and no artist withdrew.

One might interpret the artists’ attitude as unanimous consent to the Games but another obvious explanation might be that many artists just can’t permit themselves to bite the hand that feeds them, no matter how starvingly small the food rations are.

Of course, in terms of protest artists still have the possiblity to create Olympic critical art, even though those possibilities are restricted by Vanoc’s copyright over the symbols and language linked with the Olympics.

However, imagine the incomparably bigger impact local artists could have by refusing to take part in the Cultural Olympiade.

Local artists play a crucial part in Vanoc’s and the city’s policy to advertise the Games and the city itself. Their refusal would truly bring public attention to their needs and their increasingly severe problems like the lack of affordable studio space or not enough public funding, especially for non-commercialized art projects.

At one point, Furlong tells the story of his father buying himself new shows, and passing his old and ugly ones on to his son John. John was anything but grateful. He hated the shoes because his fellow students laughed at him wearing boots “that were so big you could almost paddle from them.”

Furlong goes on telling that years later he asked his father why he did not spare his son from making such a humilating experience, and his father eventually answered: “You might be a far better person if you learned once in a while how to walk in someone else’s shoes. If we could all see the world as other people see it, everybody would be quite a bit better off. And we’d be all more respectful and look what could get done.”

Furlong’s father seemed to be a wise man. I am not sure that his son really got the point, though.

In his speech Furlong praises the teamwork of Vanoc and its business partners by saying that they managed to all wear each others shoes.

This comparison is flawed. Vanoc’s business partners and Vanoc members wearing each others shoes, that’s like swapping your designer fine leather boots with the shining dress shoes of your table neighbor.

Furlong goes on talking about Vanoc’s achievements, and about people’s experiences and their sacrifices for the Games but the only ones that turn up in his speech are the ones he is swapping shoes with, the upper class members: businessmen in Australia, employers of the organizing committee, the provinces’ premiers etc.

Furlong ignores an important aspect of his father’s “walking-in-someone-else’s-shoes”-parable. It is not only about wearing somebody else’s shoes but about wearing shoes that are different than the ones you wear, and not only different but less neat and comfortable. It’s about privileged people accepting their responsibility to take care for the poor and vulnerable parts of society.

A couple of days ago, I just happened to have a memorable conversation with my father too. He said that the higher a person climbs up the greasy pole, the less able this person is to acurate self perception and therfore to identify with its employees or in general with people that are less well off.

My father seems to be a wise man too or at least an acute observer.

In her novel Malina, Ingeborg Bachmann writes about the main character’s utopian dream of people having “golden eyes”. What is meant is a time when people with shining shoes will put on the old, dirty and falling apart sneakers of the less well-heeled persons in this world.

At least in the novel this dream never came true.

The cost of building venues for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics has jumped to $580 million, pushing the cost of the Games up by 23 per cent.

Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee CEO John Furlong said the $110-million increase is a product of the city’s thriving building industry.

Realizing that the article has already been published in 2006, I searched The Canadian Newsstand for a more up to date figure, and found the following articles from December 2007.

• Prince George Citizen

Olympics on budget track, officials claim

The committee, known as VANOC, says it’s even been able to save a little cash. [...] The $580-million budget for Games venue construction includes a rainy day fund, which VANOC was forced to tap earlier in the planning process when building costs ballooned.

• The Gazette

2010 organizers top fundraising goal

Venue construction for the event remains on schedule and within the $580-million budget, the Vancouver Organizing Committee said in its report on the fourth quarter of the 2007 fiscal year.

• The Ottawa Citizen

Vancouver beats goal

Venue construction for the event remained on schedule and within the $580-million budget, VANOC added.

downloads the expendables

No word about the fact that the $580 millions have already been an amendment to the original budget of $470 millions which makes it practically impossible for Vanoc to remain within the budget, let alone “to save a little cash”.

I feel strongly reminded to the twisted reality described in Orwell’s novels. You’d almost think that a Winston Smith has been at work, revising newspaper articles to match The Party’s contemporaneous, official version of the past.

Related Link:

Number Watch
The guide to wrong numbers in science, media and politics

The posts are unpaid, so if you still hesitate to spend your free time for the cause, get convinced by the advice from the Vanoc committee at workopolis.com, the official supplier of Online Recruitment Services for the Olympics.

How can volunteerism benefit both employees and employers?

Volunteerism enhances the skills most desired by employers: work ethic, positive attitude, knowing what it means to serve, social responsibility

There is a very apt German that springs to my mind while reading this: “Hirnschmurgel”. I am sorry that I am unable to translate this word. It is not a nice one.

The employer, Vanoc, benefits from volunteerism by saving lots of money. The 24,000 volunteer posts will complement the distinctly smaller amount of 1,200 paid positions.

The committee bets on the power of attraction mega-events like the Olympics have, and the plan seems to work out. CTV.ca reported that during the first two days more than 3,000 applications have already been received from 24 countries and every province and territory in Canada.

People seem to spare neither trouble nor expenses to participate in the “mega-party” called the Olympic Games, and especially the expenses can be high. Vanoc made it quite clear to applicants that volunteers outside of Vancouver will be required to bear all costs of accommodation and transportation by themselves. Rents already soared up to the insane amount of $25,000 for the 17 days of the Olympic Games.

While most volunteers will work for free – as the word volunteerism implies, others get paid for their free time. The provincial government recently announced it is offering paid leave to provincial employees to “volunteer” with the 2010 Olympics at a half-time rate.

Maybe the provincial government and its employees have not yet realized that the the true value of voluntary work is of much more noble nature than monetary gain. They are the once who should listen to Vanoc’s advice and would do well to enhance their skills in terms of work ethic, social responsibility and knowing what it means to serve.

Related link:

CBCnews.ca – Road to the Games
Are you planning to volunteer? Why or why not?

That leaves one with the question, how an event that will produce 328,458 tonnes of carbon emission can be “carbon-neutral” in the end? Just for to get an impression of the scale, we are talking about: It would take 328,458 trees, and 40 long years to absorb this amount of carbon.

With 68.9 percent, air travel is the single largest contributor of emissions from the 2010 Olympics, followed by local transportation with 9.8 per cent. Those emissions can hardly be reduced.

A report released by the David Suzuki Foundation, commissioned and funded by Vanoc, suggests a solution of this paradox.

 The David Suzuki Foundation released a report yesterday outlining recommendations worth about $5 million to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions associated with the Games. (….)It [the report] recommends measuring and reducing carbon emissions and purchasing carbon offsets that are verifiable by a third party.

For those who are not familiar with the term “carbon offset”, this is how it works: Instead of reducing your carbon emissions, you can “cancel” your own greenhouse gases by paying for projects that reduce the gases elsewhere like reforestation programs or non-polluting energy companies.

However, not everybody is as enthusiastic as Vanoc and the Suzuki Foundation about carbon offsets.

While questioning the overall idea that all (environmental) sins are forgiven by purchasing emission reduction indulgences… pardon … credits, doubts remain if the money is really put into carbon reducing projects in the end. Offset companies often take a large percentage of the offset fee for themselves or projects are never realized. For instance, the G8 members promised to offset all carbon emissions from meetings and travel in 2005 by providing homes in Cape Town, South Africa, with solar panels and long-life bulbs. No sign of it!

Chris Shaw, spokesperson of 2010 Watch, called the Foundation’s carbon-reduction recommendations a “greenwash”. He fears that the report will give “the false illusion that the Games are green”.

To declare the 2010 Olympics a “carbon-neutral” or even a green event is as misleading as designating diet soft drinks and low-fat crisps as a healthy food alternative. Carbon offsets might compensate air pollution but can by no means “neutralize” it. Neutral means by definition “not causing or reflecting a change in something” but today there is no doubt left that the release of thousands of tons of carbon into the atmosphere definitely causes change.
Related links:

How big is your carbon footprint?

Take the quiz or
http://www.myfootprint.org

use the CO2 calculator
http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/index.html

According to the students’ work, First Nations and their culture played a leading role within the “marketable product” named Vancouver, especially in “Our Home”, a video that was a crucial part of Vancouver’s application, and was displayed at the IOC final bid presentation in Prague.

First Nations or visible minorities are shown eleven times in the footage, more than any other population group. Totem poles and Native Art appear three times. The video finally culminates with Squamish Chief Gibby Jacob welcoming the Olympics to Vancouver and Whistler in his native tongue.

Few people have ever seen the video. Disney owns the rights to the Bryan Adams song “Here I am” used as background music, and the legal right to show the video expired shortly after the IOC decision in July 2003.

Many however have seen the logo for the 2010 Olympics. If anybody wondered why it looks like “Gumby with goalie pads”, there is a deeper meaning. It is based on an Inuit symbol known as the “Inukshuk”.

Last time I encountered the logo was yesterday at a supermarket. It shed its colored radiance from a sweater worn by a little boy. I’ve seen this boy before. Like me, he and his parents often buy their groceries here. Maybe next time I meet him, he has a little Olympic mascot cuddly toy under his arm. Mascot plushies can be purchased at the Vanoc Olympic Online store under the category “Top Sellers” for a give-away price of $25 to $40. Did I mention that the three mascots – Miga, Quatchi and Sumi - are based on First Nation mythological characters?

I realized yesterday, that the students’ analysis, as well as my encounter with the 2010 Olympics merchandise business somehow connected four words in my head: Vanoc -Olympics – First Nations – profit.

I suddenly felt reminded of advertising motives certain industries once loved to use: The awe-inspiring face of an American Native Chief decorated with a feathered headdress on a tobacco packet, a sparsely dressed black woman either on a coffee tin or a chocolate bar. It’s the old concept of making profit out of the “exotic image” of a certain ethnic group which is all the worse if this group has already faced a long history of exploitation.

I am aware that this is a harsh comparison. The First Nations are actively involved in the Olympics. For instance, Chief Jacob is member of the Vanoc Board of Directors, and Vanoc has begun sponsoring many Native events and seminars, even though First Nations are divided over the question if those benefits will outweigh the negative impacts on Vancouver’s aboriginal population.

But yet, I just can’t help it. When I think about the Olympics and how they are advertised, there is a faint scent of tobacco in the air and the taste of chocolate on my tongue.

According to a Vancouver Sun article, the wooden “clamshell” should convert the square into a public gathering place for visitors during the 2010 Olympics. It might be kept permanently, and change the nature of one of Vancouver’s most prominent places forever.

The roof would spread from the Art Gallery to the waterfall on the other side of Robson street. Detailed information is not available at the moment. Just a handful of government employees and insiders seem to have seen drawings so far.

Beside the wooden roof, the project includes completion of an Asian-Pacific trade centre and the renovation of some parts of Robson Square. Costs will mount up to approximately $87 million.

Opposition is mainly centered around urban design issues, as well as the fear that a sheltered place could be a magnet for homeless people, and the question if the setting up of a temporary tent would not serve the purpose just the same while being more economic.

Another Sun article says that “even more important than cost overruns is to figure out whether or not this is even good urban design”, but to think about the overwhelming figure of $87 million might raise intriguing thoughts as well.

$87 million is a ten years permanent residency at the Bridge Suite of the Bahamian Atlantis Hotel, the world’s most expensive hotel, or one-tenth of Eritrea’s GNP in 2005, or – for to get back to a local level – the construction of 400 to 600 social housing units, which is about half of the amount of units needed in Vancouver for to reduce homelessness over the next four years, according to the latest housing report of the Impact on Community Coalition (IOCC) .

The question if a roof should be built over Robson Square is a matter of urban design, but it might also touch a broader topic, one that is raised in sociologist Harvey Molotch’s famous essay “The City as a Growth Machine”: For Whom should politics be made for? Small elites or the residents of a certain locality?