When I saw the above clip I've recalled an urban intervention that tackled the same issue:
Barriers are everywhere around Cairo directing people where and how to behave; containing people as if they were some sort of contamination; imprisoning green spaces as if it needs protection.
Is there any sort of resilience against these forces and barriers? According to Crawford Stanley Holling: ‘[Resilience is] the capacity of a system to absorb and utilize or even benefit from perturbations and changes that attain it, and so to persist without a qualitative change in the system’s structure.’
The intervention investigated a set of questions:
Are the people growing “ir-resilient” and negative towards the culture of control around us?!
Are we becoming both the suppressor as well as being suppressed?! Are we completing the role of the guardian of the barrier even if the person is absent?
الممنوع
الحواجز حولنا في كل مكان في القاهرة , توجه وتحكم تصرفات الناس, تحيط بهم كأنهم مرض معدي, تحاصر الحدائق كما لو كانت تحتاج لمن يحميها من الناس. أليس هناك نوع من رد الفعل تجاه هذه الحواجز؟ هل أصبحنا سلبيين تجاة ثقافة التحكم و الممنوع؟
هل أصبحنا نحن المانعين فضلا عن كوننا الممنوعين؟ هل أصبحنا نقوم بدور حارس الحاجز حتى في غيابه؟