Shanghai’s Expo is nearly over. Despite a certain amount of pessimism pre-event, the Expo has actually received a majority of positive feedback, certainly from the local population and most of the people involved. Shanghai has been the recipient of much governmental largesse as artists are flown in from all over the world at great expense, play to (rather too frequently) sparse crowds, but then descend on Shanghai and give a free show or two to people in the know. The huge crowds that have populated the even huger site have been exposed to all manner of crazy foreign “art” and the artists themselves have more often than not played to huge crowds of incredulous but appreciative Chinese at the various outdoor stages around the site.
That’s not to say that any kind of value for money quotient has been achieved. The huge missed opportunity to actually promote the majority of these artists properly in China has been nothing short of a tragedy, with bands, performance artists and the like in China for a single performance with no onwards Chinese or Asian touring and absolutely zero PR in local press. And the carbon footprint…
