Sales pick up for Expo.02 extravaganza

In Biel the arteplage structure symbolizes "Power and Freedom" Keystone Archive

The countdown has begun for Switzerland's largest cultural event, Expo.02, and hundreds of thousands of tickets have been snapped up.

The new Swiss President, Kaspar Villiger, has called the national exhibition one of his two top national priorities for 2002. Commissioned by the confederation in the mid-1990s, it has grown into a SFr1.4 billion ($840 million) venture.

The federal mandate turned Expo.02, which opens on May 15, into the single largest and most complex Swiss cultural event to date. For six months it is to run simultaneously in four towns where both French and German are spoken. Thousands of participants, from actors to composers, builders, and artists, have become involved.

Like the five previous national exhibitions, Expo.02 has had to overcome major problems and criticism during the preparation phase. But public opinion at the outset of 2002 appears to have taken a turn in favour of the Expo.

According to Expo.02 organisers, ticket sales have outstripped predictions for the period. By late November, 2001, some 500,000 tickets had been sold, according to organisers.

Artistic director Martin Heller calls Expo 02 a social and aesthetic experiment. “A national exhibition cannot provide ready-made answers and recipes; if it did, it would degenerate into an empty compulsory exercise. But it can, perhaps, ask the right questions, it can try to create a dialogue between culture, economics, and politics.” Heller said.

Fighter jets

The planned opening ceremony, a one-night extravaganza, has cost SFr18 million, a record for a single-night performance in Switzerland. Stages are to be located in three towns, where thousands of costumed actors and musicians will perform.

The show even includes helicopters and FA-18 fighter jets in the choreography.

Directed by the international opera and theatre director François Rochaix, the opening event is to set the scene for the 159-day duration of Expo 02. The exhibits are divided into themes or “arteplages” (art-beaches) and anchored in the Three Lakes region of western Switzerland, on and around the lakes of Biel, Neuchâtel and Murten.

Near the shores of Biel, three towers have risen, each over 40 metres high, symbolising power and freedom. In Murten, a “Monolith” – a giant cube, appears to float on the water, while in Neuchâtel a 15-metre-high strucure has been constructed.

Scores of daily shows

Some 3,000 productions will animate Expo.02 — about 75 performances each day, making a total of around 11,000 events during the six-month period. There will be additional brief poetic productions called “Little Dreams”.

The dilemma of the exhibition’s cost and size are not new, as Switzerland embraces for the sixth time the idea of staging a once-a- generation exposition.

“It cannot be denied that world exhibitions have gone rather out of fashion. Who today would still wish to win their spurs in an enterprise that consumes so many millions of francs?”

Those words were written by Director General Alexander Gavard in the official guide to the Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva in 1896.

by Devra Pitt