Mo’lympics

I realize that I’m in danger of turning this into some sort of Olympic blog, but fuck it, you can’t fight the zeitgeist. Anyway, I just wrote a little account of my trip to the Bird’s Nest for Art Review’s site. It’s a lot like something I would put on here, but this time I got paid. ((Michael Phelps fist pump))

Intro:
What can be said at this point about the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games? They are awesome. They are big and pretty and well organized. Zhang Yimou’s shock-and-awe opening and the physical domination that followed slammed the door on 100 years of humiliation for the Chinese and signalled to the rest of us the passing of the torch (!) from the old superpower to a much older one.

For years now, the Chinese media have presented the Olympics as a kind of referendum on the nation’s status in the world. Now, based on the montages of awe-struck visitors and the gold medal count that scrolls triumphantly along the bottom of nearly every TV channel here, it is clear that the results are in: China in a landslide.

The Beijing Olympics’ televised image (provided by American network NBC) has been as slick and selective as Zhang’s intro. The viewer, here and everywhere, is exposed to majestic shots of the National Stadium (aka the Bird’s Nest) and National Aquatics Center (AKA Water Cube) detached from their surroundings, their neighours cropped out, either by camera angle or cloak of darkness. A jump cut brings you suddenly inside the stadium, where the world’s greatest athletes are busy straining themselves within some sort of rectangular shape, surrounded by thousands of flag-waving fans. Knowing the great lengths to which Beijing has gone to disguise its blemishes – a cluster of dilapidated buildings next to my apartment was walled off from public view a few weeks before the opening – and knowing that the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube are anomalies in Chinese architecture, I was curious to see what else is going on at the Olympic venues. What is there beyond the edge of our TV screens? I travelled to the Olympic Green a couple days ago. Here’s what I found:
Read the rest here.

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