World Expo without illusions, but with an awareness of its possibilities

Expo site in Hannover

The most frequently asked question in relation to EXPO 2000 in Hannover, the last world exhibition on the old continent, in the Czech context, was whether a similar event still makes sense in the age of the internet and easily accessible information. In the case of the world exhibition in Aichi, Japan, Czech media were mainly concerned about whether we would be represented. And at what cost. However, the question, although unanswered, hangs in the air. Before I attempt to respond to it, I will return to the very beginnings, namely the 18th century and, of course, to the founding event in 1851, when the history of world exhibitions begins in London.

World exhibitions and exhibitions aimed at an ever-expanding audience are connected—regardless of whether they involve presentations of technical achievements, fine arts, or agriculture—with the birth of capitalism and nation-states, with the period of definitive hegemony of Euro-American civilization and what we call the project of modernity. A significant condition and at the same time a consequence of the process that began around the mid-18th century is the emergence of a public, a sum of individuals who know, assess, and co-decide on social goals without direct dependence on their lord or the ruling administration. However, they are also recipients of information, targets of persuasion, and subjects of manipulation. The public is not only a group to which, as was the case in Enlightenment salons and as Immanuel Kant dreamed, something is presented for critical, free assessment, but also (and increasingly so) a mass of individuals who are to be astonished, convinced, or entertained, preferably by standardized methods, as Guy Debord, a critic of so-called society of the spectacle, expressed. The existence of the public is a necessary condition for any exhibition in the modern sense of the word, even though some rituals from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods repeat in it, when, on exceptional occasions, images demonstrating the wealth and prestige of notable noble families were either exhibited before the crowd or carried in processions. The public is no longer a gathering of people staring at unattainable representative objects, but is understood as the essence of a new social order that must adopt and develop what is presented to it for viewing.

Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton (London, 1851)

The emergence of public museums throughout Europe (immediately during the French Revolution, a new public institution is formed from the royal art collections in the Louvre), as well as the first world exhibition in London and new concentrated forms of display and sale of goods essentially have the same denominator, a similar meaning, and are based on analogous principles. Certain types of exhibitions create their own institutions, their own ways of classifying what they show, and their own rules of behavior for spectators, which are then interwoven into their actions and thinking. The most frequently cited example on which Tony Bennett builds part of his discussion about the birth of the museum is the analogies in the construction of the space of department stores or shopping arcades, the arrangement of certain sections of the Crystal Palace at the London world exhibition, and the structure of museums emerging at the same time. The shocking multiplicity and diversity of what is offered is framed by the will for rational organization and categorization. While the fantastic and unusual are present as something extraordinary, they are nevertheless incorporated into comprehensible contexts.

The institutionalization of world exhibitions as a significant source of information, entertainment, and the construction of a certain image of the world has, of course, its economic, but primarily political implications. At a time when art museums construct developmental sequences of painting or sculpture according to national schools, countries try to present their unique image at world exhibitions. Comparison and trumping is a political and ideological weapon of its kind (Paris in 1937 saw how Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union see themselves), participation or non-participation expresses relationships between states: for example, in 1889, French organizers returned to the centennial anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and most European monarchies were thus represented by private entities without state support. World exhibitions also took the first steps towards the obvious future globalization through the presentation of non-European cultures and civilizations, especially through showcases from colonized territories, but also with a significant presence of delegations from Asia. The east-west axis has, in fact, become the main reference line up to the present day. Rio de Janeiro (1922/23) and Johannesburg (1936/37) are exceptions that confirm the rule, while Hanoi, Nan-Ting, Osaka, Okinawa, Tsukuba, Taejon, Aichi, and now Shanghai clearly testify to the polarization of interests.

Expo Brussels '58

At the beginning, there is an effort to visually provide the public with the maximum amount of information, and over the years world exhibitions have primarily become a tool for comparing nation-states, their development, wealth, and mutual positions, with recent years showing a tendency to focus particularly on the economic and developmental potential of organizing such an event and its immediate benefit to the given locality. Prestige yes, but not at any cost. Similarly, the contents and methods of exhibitions shift from informing and shaping the public to openly providing entertainment (infotainment and edutainment) and conducting tourist marketing, which accompanies hidden but all the more important economic negotiations within the programs in individual pavilions. The techniques and technologies that once amazed visitors have now become commonplace; however, in their development, world exhibitions no longer serve military purposes as they once did. Demonstrative appeals to humanity or hopes associated with new media and art that formed the ethos of EXPO 58 in Brussels or architectural experiments that presumably ended with the Dutch pavilion by the MVDRV studio at the world exhibition in Hannover have been replaced by spectacular and highly utilitarian designs with clip-like implications for the whole family grafted onto unified exhibition units. While legendary amusement parks on New York's Coney Island at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were based on attractions from world exhibitions, today it is about the most efficient use and variations of commonly used presentation methods and the refined introduction of new products to the market. Little room for experiments and crazy ideas, but precise calculations of profit margins, even if symbolic.

So what sense does it make to hold a world exhibition today? It seems that there is little left of the original ideals and opportunities. However, in a globalized world interconnected by the internet and digital mutual control, world exhibitions remain places of primary experience and opportunities to compare or let the current world affect us. We have nothing else. Just a continuously restructured tangle of intentions, ambitions, and information. After all, similarly, the institutions that were born at the same time as world exhibitions did not end with a bang. With the difference that they are not reborn every five years but continuously justify their existence. In any case, participation in a world exhibition encourages state representations to at least try to formulate and showcase what they consider remarkable about themselves, what they can and want to distinguish themselves with. Much will be revealed. The critical public will then compare, reflect, and seek alternatives. Until the next EXPO.

Marek Pokorný
the author is the director of the Moravian Gallery in Brno