"In post conflictual countries like Lebanon, the public sphere was condemned to death by war. The residents of our cities lost the freedom to move around. The public spaces that act as catalysers of the urban realm are appropriated. They where claimed as private in the male struggle for power by the lethal bullets of snipers. The stairs of gemmayzeh where one of those victims. Now it was time to act and try to reclaim these spaces. Open Air cinema ,a tribute to Fairuz the famous Lebanese singer, was a spontaneous extracurricular intervention During a workshop on public spaces organized by studiobeirut, Archis and Partizan Publik. The idea was to reclaim the stairs as public space by screening a documentary on Fairuz and the Lebanese war. The art intervention came as a mean to appropriate the stair case and declare the physical and the visual united. The black and white image in the flyer was scaled up and printed as a 3mx3m poster. The printout was sliced into pieces then installed on the riser of the staircase. The original image can be seen from a vantage point at a far distance and at close-up it turns into thousands of pixels. The aim of the artwork is to attract the locals and to try to re-familiarize the public space in a therapeutic way."

While i realize we are not in the same situation per say in toronto, i feel as though something similar needs to be done. "Public" space is never public here it seems. A perfect example is when the ROM attempted to get out of paying the $2,400 a year fee because its new “crystal” extension juts over public land. The ROM knew about the fee when it decided to build into public space. Their argument seemed to be based on the idea that this would be a way for the City to show support for public institutions. By waving the fee, that's $2,400 a year that the City's treasury is out. That's $2,400 a year that can not be used to fund actual public institutions. You know, the kind that don't cost $20 per visit. I realize this is an older topic, but i think it's a perfect example of how much value is placed on public space in toronto...