MIXED MEDIA: Members of a group
called the Public Space Committee placed temporary messages over advertising
signs on Thursday night. They hope to daw attention to a proposed city bylaw
that would severely restrict where members of the public can put up posters.
Activists take on poster bylaw
With masking tape and crayons, they
bring anti-postering dispute to the streets
By Catherine Porter
Staff Reporter
You may have seen one in your bus shelter.
Or on the garbage can at the end of your street.
Where once there was a foaming beer, now there is a pastel flower. Yesterday
a delicate panty-hosed leg? Today, a skeleton pronouncing the fulfilling
joys of shopping.
Local activists protesting the postering bylaw currently under consideration
by Toronto City Council converted the Annex and Little Italy into a giant
kindergarten class Thursday night, with coloured construction paper covering
bus shelters and trash bins. On them were pictures, doodles and messages,
all drawn by hand with crayons and chalk.
"Buying satisfies me," declared the skeleton from the bus shelter
at Spadina Ave. and Harbord St. "Buying fills me up."
It was no accident that their art covered commercial advertisements, said
Dave Meslin.
It was their statement.
"It's more about who's making (the picture) than what's on it,"
said Meslin, co-ordinator of the Public Space Committee that is spearheading
opposition to the proposed postering bylaw. "What we have right now
is a price tag on freedom of expression. So if you can afford $20,000 to
put up a billboard, then you can express yourself."
The proposed bylaw has touched a nerve
among many community groups since it landed before council last April. Aimed
at cleaning up the streets, it would limit posters to 2 per cent of the
city's 100,000 utility poles. Anyone caught advertising their garage sale
or searching for their cat on an unapproved pole would be slapped with a
$60 fine.
Faced with vociferous opposition, council referred the matter back to staff,
who this month turned the matter over to a public forum.
Many of the advertisements covered by activists were on recycling and trash
bins owned by OMG, an outdoor advertising company that in the past has threatened
legal action against groups that pasted posters on their property.
"They are for public use, but they are still private property,"
said Loredana Oliveti, OMG's vice-president of communications, adding that
advertisers pay as much as $450 a month for the trash-side space.
"We have to send a crew around to remove them because our clients will
complain. That's not what they bought. They didn't buy a box with posters
all over it."
By using masking tape instead of spray-paint, the artists hoped to avoid
such confrontations, said Meslin.
"By not damaging any of the boxes, any vandalism charges wouldn't stick."
Of course, that meant the art wouldn't stick either. Many of the pictures
had already fallen to the ground by yesterday morning.
But that didn't matter, Meslin said. What mattered is that you saw it.
"The first reaction of people who see it is shock. Then, hopefully,
the next stage is to think, `Why is it shocking to see artwork? Why does
human expression seem so out of place, while corporate ads seem normal?'"
he said.
"It triggers the thought process, of `Whose space is public space?'
And those thoughts will be permanent." |
