Storefront’s post-Olympic city

Cor­re­spond­ing to the advent of the Olympic Games in Lon­don, the Store­front for Art and Archi­tec­ture has cre­ated  a “Post-Olympic city” exhi­bi­tion dis­play­ing the work of pho­tog­ra­pher Jon Pack and film­maker Gary Hus­twit. Pack and Hus­twit are work­ing to doc­u­ment the legacy of the Olympic Games in a vari­ety of host cities, using pho­tog­ra­phy, video, and mem­o­ra­bilia. So far, the duo has doc­u­mented the Games in Athens, Barcelona, Mex­ico City, Los Ange­les, Mon­treal, Lake Placid, Rome, and Sara­jevo; and they plan on vis­it­ing Bei­jing, Moscow, Berlin, and Lon­don. They are cur­rently com­pil­ing their work in a book that will be avail­able in the spring of 2013. On August 14th , the Store­front hosted an event where the artists and a group of knowl­edge­able pan­elists dis­cussed the effects of the Olympics on host cities once the Clos­ing Cer­e­mony is over. 

The pan­elists and the audi­ence dis­cussed the cases where host cities were able to cre­ate sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture— and the cases where cities spent bil­lions just to dis­man­tle every­thing they had spent bil­lions to build. Mex­ico City is an exam­ple of a city that ben­e­fited from the ’68 Olympics, tripling in size and, sig­nif­i­cantly, con­tin­ues to use the sta­di­ums it con­structed. It’s uni­ver­sally con­sid­ered an honor to host Olympics, but that is not the only rea­son cities bid for the Olympics. They often receive fed­eral money and spon­sor­ship to help build infra­struc­ture, such as sub­way sys­tems and parks. Addi­tion­ally, the tourism helps local busi­nesses immensely. The con­ver­sa­tion took an inter­est­ing turn when Gary Hus­twit asked the ques­tion, “What cities need this devel­op­ment?” He pointed out that Los Ange­les hosted the Olympics in 1984, and did not need to build any­thing new— so the city made a lot of money off of the Games. He said, “Now you can­not tell that it ever hosted the Olympics, but maybe that is the sign of suc­cess.” Lon­don, on the other hand, plans to keep only 6 out of the 22 venues that were just built.

One mem­ber of the audi­ence brought up the fact that often cities try to improve their image by clean­ing up shanty towns and dis­plac­ing peo­ple with­out hav­ing a sus­tain­able plan for relo­ca­tion. The fact that so much is done with­out includ­ing cit­i­zens in the dis­cus­sion can cre­ate eth­i­cal prob­lems. The artists’ work con­tributes to the exist­ing inter­est­ing debate about the pos­i­tive, as well as neg­a­tive, lega­cies of the Olympic Games.

Unfor­tu­nately, the exhibit has closed, but click here if you want to see what the Store­front for Art and Archi­tec­ture has com­ing up. Have thoughts on an Olympic Legacy, whether good or bad? Tweet at us @cityatlas.