Two months after Expo ’92 opened its gates, organizers at the Israeli pavilion are trying to figure how to communicate a message they thought could be transmitted without words.
The pavilion, which receives what the Israelis say are 4,000 visitors daily, was designed to represent the life of the Jews from the Torah to the peace process in a 65-projector slide show featuring 4,000 images and soothing music. But the average visitor, it turns out, comes out a bit confused about the show’s point.
“It was dark,” said Zarin, an English woman of Indian origin. “And then I came with my children, so it was very difficult to control them. It was all set up for you, but I think it’s more proper for elderly couples. I wanted to bring my children to teach them about other countries.”
“There’s a whole lot of security and not much content,” said Chary, a young woman from Seville. “I can’t see what the meaning of it was.”
One positive, although ironic, fact is that visitors have been drawn to the Israeli pavilion precisely because of its lines, caused by the wait for a security check before entering.
“People have this tendency to line up whenever they see lines,” said Yoel Salpak, the pavilion’s press attache.
Upon entering the pavilion, a simple hut painted in the blue and white of the Israeli flag and shaped like the House of the Book that keeps the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem, a visitor is meant to be submerged in the images that are reflected on the walls, floor and ceiling.
An audiovisual presentation runs for 16 minutes. The audience slowly follows a five-part show, walking through time by peering into glass cases to see signature objects from the millennia: a stone used in the construction of the Hulda Gate in the first century BCE, a facsimile of the Alba Bible in medieval Spain, Albert Einstein’s autographed e=mc(2) note, a cell-scan cancer detector developed in Israel.
NO CROWD-PLEASERS
Because Israel took a long time to decide whether to participate in the Expo, the planning was somewhat rushed.
The pavilion cost some $7 million, far below the average cost of other Expo exhibits. And with one-third of the cost going to the structure and security, the Israeli show does not include hoopla.
Instead of dazzling visitors with high-tech screens, joyrides, “freaks” (such as the Pakistani giant dressed in Aladdin garb greeting visitors to the restaurant) or unusual crowd-pleasers — such as Chile’s Iceberg, brought in from Antarctica–Israel chose to simply give an overview of the country and its people.
“But the audiences are a little less sophisticated than we expected,” Salpak said.
Because of this, a two-minute introduction is being broadcast outside of the hut to people waiting in line.
“We had to adapt to the audience response,” said Itzhak Shalev, the pavilion’s director. “This is like the Roman Empire: Give the people what they want. We had to take into consideration the character and the age of the visitor, which is much younger than we expected.”
More than 100 pavilions representing as many participating countries are scattered in a 531-acre site in La Cartuja island. Expo ’92, the last world exposition of the century, opened April 16 and is set to go on through Oct. 12, commemorating the day Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world 500 years ago.
Of the many visitors since the Expo opened — many of them Sevillians who take advantage of their $300 season passes by visiting three or four times a week — 150,000 are said to have gone through the Israeli pavilion, compared with England’s 300,000, and Japan’s, one of the more popular pavilions, which reports it has already passed its 1-millionth visitor.
The visitors go for the unusual. The biggest lines wrap around Canada’s pavilion, presenting a giant screen with amazingly clear images, or the Fujitsu pavilion, with a very well-done 3-D movie, or Monaco’s, with its aquarium representing all the fish in the country’s shores.
Though only a small percentage of the visitors will eventually stop by the Israeli pavilion, they may unknowingly thank Israeli technology during those all-too-common scorching Seville days. Practically all the cooling, sprinkling, dripping and vaporizing systems and the substructure for water were set up by Israeli contractors.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
