Mega-Events as Economies of the Imagination by Rodanthi Tzanelli

Author:Rodanthi Tzanelli [Tzanelli, Rodanthi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138300286
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

And we watch the birth of meaning: corresponding to the Ceremony’s animated ‘Prologue’ and the birth of the Amazonian Tree of Life, the flower’s ‘life’ spreads across the stage in fine green threads. In this poetic event, it is not a white Conrad ploughing his way through the Amazonian ‘heart of darkness’, but an innocent black boy in white from the Tropics that bears testimony to the salvation of the memory of beauty, of spring. Like the European tradition of poetic modernism guiding T.S. Eliot’s pen, the Olympic segment’s harmonisation of local (Drummond de Andrade) and Western (Judi Dench) voices, warns that we must always remember what we did to our home planet, if we wish to be reborn (O’Brien, 2008, p. 47). But unlike the European modernist tradition, which provides no directions as to how to transcend the human-made (Great War) catastrophe, the Olympic segment points to the beginning of a solution: to avoid more wastage (degrowth’s environmentalist philosophical core – Martinez-Alier, 2015) and to populate the planet with more nature.

In this segment we see a clearer connection of the country’s colonial-come-military past (rife with historical incidents of deforestation, exploitation of local resources and the rise of consumer capitalism) to its present ecological problems and the imagineering of solidary, global futures. Moving beyond Euro- and Western-centric paradigms of modernity (Chakrabarty, 2000; Mignolo, 2000, 2002), the performance outlines a transmodern future, more inclusive of its negated alterities (represented by the black boy and the repressed urban nature), ‘in a process of mutual creative fertilization’ (Dussel, 1995, p. 76). As the segment’s journey through the country’s forests and local ecosystems ends with a panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro and the symbol of peace as a ‘Tree of Life’, Dench announces that each athlete will be provided in the ceremonial ‘Parade’ with a seed to plant. The ‘Athletes’ Forest for Rio de Janeiro’ featured in these closing remarks as a symbolic beginning of our common future. With a panoramic perspective of Rio’s urban stage, we hear the announcement of the athletic procession.

The ‘Parade’ was punctuated with a number of episodic ‘events’ that fit into the interrogation of global imaginaries of dépense, in agreement with the artistic ceremony: the first event included the Team of Refugee Athletes, who marched into the Stadium just ahead of the Brazilian team. The Team’s athletes received a standing ovation from the crowd and an introduction by IOC President, Thomas Bach. He added that, by offering them a home in the Olympic Village, the IOC produced ‘a symbol of hope for all the refugees in [the] world’, making everyone better aware of the magnitude of the present crisis: ‘These refugee athletes will show the world that, despite the unimaginable tragedies they have faced, anyone can contribute to society through their talent, skills and strength of the human spirit’ (Meagher, 5 August 2016). Representing over 20 million displaced people from around the world, the Team was an IOC initiative that brought United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon to the Rio Olympics (Marans, 12 August 2016).

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