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Flashback: Vancouver eases Olympic protest restrictions | Anti-Olympic signs could net 6 months’ jail: rights group | UK: Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games | 2010 Olympic security plans include ‘free speech’ zones

Marsha Lederman, the Globe and Mail
December 11, 2009

Gallery and artist claim piece was removed because of its message, prompting concern about free-expression rights

The city of Vancouver has ordered the removal of a mural hanging outside a Downtown Eastside gallery depicting the Olympic rings as four sad faces and one smiley face.

The gallery says in 10 years, it has never before been asked to remove any work.

The city issued the order under its graffiti bylaw, but it comes in the wake of a debate over a controversial city sign bylaw that opponents feared would allow officials to stifle anti-Olympic expression.

“It was pretty clear to me that it was because of the context of the work,” says Colleen Heslin, who runs the Crying Room, a small studio focusing on emerging artists.

Ms. Heslin points out that over the years she has hung about 30 murals there, and has never had any trouble. She has also used that space as a giant chalkboard, allowing passersby to write or draw whatever they wanted (which included swear words) and was never asked to remove that either.

In fact, when her landlord, Peter Wong, received a notice from the city telling him to remove the graffiti from his building, he had no idea what they were talking about. “I called them and said I cannot find the graffiti. And they said the sign [the mural] is graffiti.” This surprised him, because the murals have been up for years and he had never heard from the city about them before.

The mural — black paint on varnished wood — may look grittier than other works that have hung on the front of the gallery in the past, but the artist, Jesse Corcoran, says he has no doubt it was ordered taken down not because of a misunderstanding but because of its anti-Olympic content. “I think that they were very careful to try and just term it as graffiti … but let’s be honest: it’s on the front of a gallery that has had a rotating series of art pieces. So I think that’s just the kind of terminology [they used] to avoid it seeming like it was being removed because of the Olympics.”

Vancouver spokesperson Theresa Beer says a city inspector viewed the work as graffiti, not a mural, noting “black graffiti tags on wood panelling covering a window.”

“It has nothing to do with content,” Ms. Beer added.

While this removal was ordered under the city’s graffiti by-law, a sign bylaw in Vancouver has faced heavy criticism. First passed in July, it was accused of stifling debate by giving police and city officials broad power to seize signs and placards, with one civil libertarian saying the city was at risk of becoming “Beijing 2.0.” The law was revised last month to apply only to commercial signs, with Mayor Gregor Robertson saying the city’s “commitment has always been the protection of people’s Charter Rights and Freedoms.”

Ms. Heslin removed the mural on Nov. 16, complying because she likes to rotate the art there anyway (the work had been up since Sept. 25). Also she didn’t want to cause Mr. Wong any grief, as he allows her to install the murals without restrictions — a great freedom, she says, for someone running a gallery with no funding.

The mural is unquestionably an anti-Olympic statement. Mr. Corcoran, who works at a homeless shelter, feels that the Olympics have not served marginalized people of the Downtown Eastside well. He is upset that some key gathering places for homeless people — such as Oppenheimer Park — have been shut down for pre-Olympic renovations. “The oppressive nature of the Games is what I wanted to capture and how the majority is suffering for the minority.”

And for everyday Vancouverites like himself, Mr. Corcoran says, the Games are simply inaccessible. “I live in Vancouver and I pay taxes and I’m not going to be able to go to the Olympics. I can’t afford to go to the Olympics. So basically on a lot of people’s backs like the taxpayers of British Columbia, the Olympics are being staged and it’s not really for us. I find that frustrating and I think there’s a lot of issues that should be dealt with before we have to worry about increasing our ability to host sports events.”

Patrick Smith, director of Simon Fraser University’s Institute of Governance Studies, said the removal of the sign is symptomatic of the high demands the “Olympic movement” places on its host cities. He believes Vancouver will be the beginning of a shift away from the modern Olympic era, with communities saying the cost of hosting is too high.

“A lot is asked of communities, and it seems to me this is a perfectly good example of where we’ve gone too far,” he said. “There’s no other way to describe it other than overreaction, but it’s the city trying to protect a brand that’s not the city’s brand. It’s the Olympic movement’s brand.”

It’s the latest in a series of cases where the Olympic interests have trumped Canadian or local interests, he argues, citing other examples such as a recent court ruling that Canadian women ski jumpers couldn’t claim a spot in the Games under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or a new B.C. law that allows police to force homeless people into shelters in severe weather. Civil libertarians argue the law is simply a tool to sweep Vancouver’s homelessness problem under the rug during the Games.

“I think the city has kind of caved in to a whole serious of events here,” said Prof. Smith, also a past chair of SFU’s department of political science. “It [the Olympic movement] dictates an awful lot to local citizens. It’s not as if the event isn’t interesting and doesn’t grab the attention of people around the world, but [the Olympic movement] goes to far and it asks too much.”

Source | See also under Olympics: Olympic torch protested in Montreal | Border guards are now Olympic thought police – Amy Goodman detained | Vancouver eases Olympic protest restrictions | Anti-Olympic activists decry ‘Orwellian’ treatment | Vancouver police get military sound cannon just in time for Olympics | Protesters block Olympic torch relay | UBC students tutored on Olympic security rights | Government’s Olympic Suites Uncovered, Prices Start at $115,000 | Glitch at Vancouver Olympic security exercises | Nazi Olympics exhibit opens in Vancouver | Anti-Olympic signs could net 6 months’ jail: rights group | Olympic security follows protester’s friend | As Olympics loom, B.C. wants to force homeless into shelters in extreme weather | Canada, at war, to urge peace for everyone else during Olympics | CF-18s join B.C. Olympic security drill | Oympics push army to edge | UK: Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games | 2010 Olympic security plans include ‘free speech’ zones | UK: Spy bugs may be deployed for 2012 Olympics | Olympics-Cruise ships set for security in 2010 Games | Pre-Olympic transit ads encourage citizen surveillance | Olympics a ’stimulus package’ for Vancouver: VANOC | Olympic security good for Canada, IOC head says | Military and police practice integration during Olympic security exercises | Military to be out in force for Vancouver Olympics | Olympic security boss puts protesters on notice | Vancouver dodges public referendum requirement for funding to finish Olympic Village | Vancouver mayor to recall legislature to handle Olympic Village crisis | Former mayors support secrecy surrounding Olympic Village bailout | China names 8 alleged Olympic terrorists | Activists seen as potential threat to Vancouver Games | Doubt Arises in Account of pre-Olympic ‘Uighur’ Attack in China | Rounded up into torture camps: the ‘undesirables’ China doesn’t want you to see | Pentagon Front Groups Release Laughable Olympics “Terror” Video | Beijing lockdown | Mass Arrests as Beijing Prepares for Olympics | Defiant Beijing family loses home | China wages war on Olympic weather | Beijing families forcibly relocated for Olympics | Tanks, Face-Scanning Cameras Part of ‘Discreet’ 2010 Games Security | Toronto rallies denounce Burma, China regimes | Vancouver Olympics security cameras raise privacy concerns | CSIS Spying on Natives, Olympic Dissidents | China’s Men In Blue

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