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Magazine
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An Interview with Vladimír DarjaninMr. General Commissioner, we are at the beginning of the year 2005 and the moment is fast approaching when the gates of Expo 2005 in Aichi will open. How would you summarize the state of preparations thus far? In terms of preparations, the past year has been a critical one. We signed contracts for the design, program and construction of our exposition and in September we began the actual building. A successful media campaign was launched in the autumn, which is enabling us to gradually build up something that has been missing here for many years: a strong "brand" association with Expo. Cooperation with various governmental institutions is also continuing quite successfully: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by Foreign Minister Svoboda, whose support we highly value, the Ministries of Culture and the Environment, and the government agencies CzechTourism, CzechTrade and CzechInvest. At the same time, we have established exceptionally close relations with the Japanese Embassy [in Prague] and the Ambassador of Japan, Mr. [Koichi] Takahashi, with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Japan and our ambassador, Mr. [Karel] Žebrakovský, and with representatives of the Japan Association for the 2005 World Exposition, led by the Commissioner General of the entire exposition Mr. [Taizo] Watanabe. I can confidently state that we have managed to meet all the goals we set out at the beginning, something that makes me quite happy. One aspect of your work is monitoring preparations on the site itself. What has been your experience thus far with the organizational preparations on the part of the Japan Association for the 2005 World Exposition? As I have said previously on a number of different occasions, the Japanese are very able and uncompromising negotiators, something which is of course reflected in their approach towards the participating countries. Naturally, our Japanese partners are always very correct, very polite and always well prepared; nevertheless negotiations with them are sometimes reminiscent of a war of nerves. There has been a steady modification of and additions made to the regulations, financial conditions have been altered, which given Japanese prices is unacceptable for us, sometimes areas of competence are not entirely clear... However, I would not like this to be understood as complaining. The World Expo is a huge project and organizing it is no easy task. It must be said that the organizers have made the maximum effort and that preparations on their part are of the highest quality; I am quite convinced that by September 2005, the minor problems I have mentioned, which have been encountered by all the participating countries, will seem to be very minor irritants in comparison with the overall success of Expo 2005. Yet in spite of them, something has been managed that isn't even normal for the Japanese... You must be referring to our establishing contacts and developing a relationship with Fuji TV, the largest Japanese commercial television station, and its CEO, Mr. [Hisashi] Hieda. It is quite remarkable and I hope that this relationship will manifest itself in the promoting of our pavilion and the Czech Republic as such. Relations with Fuji TV are incredibly important to us and the approach of all the interested parties has been very generous. We have had it confirmed that a very popular Japanese television presenter will be taking part in the Czech National Day and we are in negotiations about additional possibilities for cooperation. During his visit in 2003, Mr. Heida was very taken with Prague and the Czech Republic, which I think is one of our main assets. Japan is a very distant country and so a large number of visitors from the Czech Republic can't really be expected. This is one of the reasons why two temporary exhibitions are being held in the Nostitz Palace in Prague: the retrospective "From Brussels 1958 to Aichi 2005" and an exhibition of Czech art glass entitled "Captured by Light and Space." What has been the response so far? It has been exceptionally positive. So much so that I was in fact quite surprised. I knew of course during preparations for the exhibitions that their content would be quite interesting to the general public, but the actual level of interest has truly surprised us. We are quite pleased that we were able to premiere one of the supplemental programs, an exhibition of Czech art glass, for the Czech general public as an expression of our thanks for their support. I would also like to thank Minister of Culture Dostál once more for the tremendous support he has provided to this project. What we wanted to do was invite the public to Japan in this way and show them that they can be proud of what Czechs have done at home and in a global context. What message would you like to give our readers? First and foremost I would like to thank them for their interest and support. This is not only a source of inspiration for us but more importantly it is an obligation not to disappoint our public and to succeed in spite of the odds. We are doing everything possible to ensure that we represent the entire Czech Republic with honor and not to disappoint those who have believed in us from the very beginning and whose support we value tremendously. We are very much looking forward to opening the gates of our pavilion as well as those of the whole Czech Republic to Japan. Once more, allow me to thank you and wish you all the best in 2005. Thank you for this interview The interview with Mr. Vladimír Darjanin, General Commissioner for Czech Participation at Expo 2005 was conducted by Martina Hončíková |
