An Act of Cultural Vandalism

Architorture, Castle Street, Dublin

Here is the reply to all your queries about the concrete slab that was placed at Castle Street. Read and weep!
Question to Dublin City Manager Feb 2013
Can the Manager issue a report with regard the closure of Dublin Castle to tourists and historical tours. Also can the report include the works that are taking place in Castle Street, Cork Hill entrance to City Hall which is I believe is in relation to erecting flagpoles.

Reply:
The closure of Dublin Castle to tourists and historical tours as required by events in relation to Ireland’s presidency of the EU Is a matter for the Office of Public Works.

Traffic bollards have been placed at the junction of Dame St and Cork Hill to provide more protection to pedestrians. City Hall is on the Dubline walk from Trinity to Kilmainham and the left turn from Parliament St can be very busy, the bollards provide a traffic calming measure.

Dublin City Council has placed a concrete structured behind the bollards as the council felt a strong visual block was also necessary. This structure is temporary and will include three flagpoles. Dublin City Council will address access to City Hall and the council’s Rates Offices through a Part VIII planning application shortly which will incorporate the permanent proposals for this area. The council anticipates that this application will go before the Elected Members in summer 2013 at the earliest.

An Act of No Contrition

Time to kill the myth that Religious congregations and the State cared for people back then or even now. The women of the Magdalene were the raw material, the work force, that gave many of these congregations their economic existence. The poor, kept poor, were always enslaved. This has nothing go to do with religion or God but got to do with enterprise. Enterprises of indoctrination, subservience and slavery. This same construct is evident in the way the struggle of the Magdalene women is being rolled out to the public. The absolute insult and cowardice of the religious congregations involved to merely issue a press apology rather than actually face the public and society is evidence of the indifference of the superiors of the organisation. They are out of touch with humanity. They are out of touch with the pain and suffering of others. They certainly must be dislocated from their own feelings. They truly have removed themselves from their very vocations and are obviously only concerned with Vaticanism and their own preservation and status. They have no cause to exist now, other than their bogus claim of caring and healing and mercy. They certainly showed none today. The media and its personalities and celebrities need to get away from their own sense of patronizing and sentimentalizing the issues and the people who were incarcerated in all of Ireland's institutions and stop projecting their uncomfortability of the issue back onto those who are struggling for truth and accountability. We're not helpless morons with low IQ's to be locked away from society. Step aside and let the truth of the people who were in these institutions emerge uncontaminated and 'unstolen' into society. The exact same modus operandi of the powerful and those who pretend or purport to speak on behalf of the voiceless was again raging all around us today in media circus. That facts of the matter are, that Ireland, along with other despot regimes, carried out cruel and inhumane treatment on vast numbers of it's citizens. The Magdalene Laundry issues are not stand alone. They emerge alongside a culture of abuses that were perpetrated in hundreds of institutions in this State, from nursing homes to mental homes to industrial and reform schools, mother and baby homes, so called orphanages, magdalene laundries, jails, prisons and borstals. Irish society has a fake view of itself as a Christian caring society and prides itself on its grandiose charitable gestures and its great work on behalf of the poor. Yet today, the simplest gesture of all, an apology, was refused and a Nation, its people and those gravely wronged were forsaken.  And those that should have been seen in the practice of atonement, which is their vocation, were hiding behind their convent walls, paid for out of Magdalene labour.  Who now should we command the truth, the whole truth and the honest truth from?  Who now will come to our refuge with the saving words of apology?  Or are we to continue the journey or torment and indifference brought about by the extraordinary arrogance of our present leader, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his Government. 

And all of this was done in the name of Jesus.

 

The Continuity of Secrecy and Clandestine Operations

The Continuation of Dark Manoeuvres

True to form the secret Irish State still has not indicated where it will release and at time it will release the long awaited Senator Martin McAleese report into the Magdalene Laundry system.  The continuation of regimes of secrecy is alive and well in the manner this report is being engineered in a controlled fashion into the public domain.  Divide and conquer and separate and drip feed is the order of the day.  The same modus operandi happened around the other reports into the regimes of terror that took place in Ireland's institutions.  The Ryan report, the Ferns report, the Cloyne report, the Raphoe report, and all such reports where the State and the Church were found to be in collusion were all released to a frenzy of media confusion and within a couple of days had died off without any real accountability or consequences for those that had gravely wronged generations of children, women and girls.  No surprise so folks, that Senator McAleese, the State and all those involved in this report are partaking in an architecture of secrecy and bogus confidentiality around such vital public information.  They need to wake up and treat the public and public information with greater respect.  The lack of information of what time and where this report will be released is causing unnecessary anxiety, stress and trauma to tens of thousands of those stigmatized and labeled by Magdalene laundryism through out the world. This whole episode will now cascade into an unnecessary media frenzy and over energized fast-track analysis of its contents rather than any real moment of truth and confirmation of the terrible wrongs that this State and this society perpetrated on the many. What we know for certain though, is that this is merely going to prolong the misery journey for many as to date, all of the former reports have amounted to nothing other than a whitewash and an indifference to human rights abuses. #justiceformagdalenesNOW

Debt, Solvency and Vision - Talk by Ray Yeates (DCC Arts Officer)

Tuesday 22nd Jan, at 1pm - at The Irish Stock Exchange, 28 Anglesea St, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Ray Yeates is the CEO of Temple Bar Cultural Trust and Dublin City Council Arts Officer

In present day Ireland the threat of debt and solvency is a constant in our lives manifest in fears like liquidation, foreclosure and personal liability.

This talk will address issues of what we owe to ourselves in order to be able to meet what we owe to others. A clear vision of the path we must walk with ourselves in order to rid ourselves of this overwhelming burden will be addressed by Ray Yeates from the very floor of the Irish Stock Exchange which on the one hand can generate enormous wealth but also that same wealth can generate overwhelming hardship on a society through the levying of the great debt that Ireland finds itself in at the moment.  

It is not often, with all the media coverage on the doom and gloom and the state of Ireland, that you get a light gleaming for an instant.  Debt, Solvency and Vision is that glimmer of gleaming light. 

"What do you do when you fall far from help?  We wait till we can get up. Then we go on. On! " Samuel Beckett

 

This talk will address how to care for the self while working to resolve the overwhelming issues of personal liabilities in the bankrupt Ireland of today. You are not what you owe and you are not the property of others.  The most important asset in all of this is YOU.

 

 

Ray Yeates comes with a vast experience of personal and professional entrepreneurship which involved, as Artistic Director, putting the Ballymun Axis Arts Centre on the cultural map and advancing the relationship between culture and communities the personal trials and tribulations of the artistic creative journey are brought to bear in this exciting creative approach to unstanding better our relationship with debt, with particular emphasis on personal debt and solvency. He has been involved with the cultural industries for the best part of 30 years producing, writing, directing and leading many different cultural enterprises both at home and abroad. He is at present spearheading Dublin City Councils Arts plan and cultural vision for the future.

 

"Use your head, can't you, use your head. You're on earth, there's no cure for that!" S. Beckett

 

 

 

 

 

'Before' - by Bill Hastings - Photographic Projection

Photographic Projection by Bill Hastings begins Monday 21st from 5pm at Bernardo Square, City Hall Dublin 

‘Before’ is a rich story of what it was like before the gush and rush for borrowed money known as the boom. Looking at this artwork, one does not get a sense of loss, sentimentality or nostalgia for something that has gone simply because this volume of work manages to capture its essence, its DNA and our instincts repond to that memory, that fabric, those laughing, smiling, playing, citizens of Dublin.

In viewing this work, you are taking a journey through a living city and its people.  These photographs are not historical, they are very  much a part of the present and a vital component of the continuing journey of this great Dublin City and its people.  See for yourself. 

 

Bill Hastings is an architect, photographer and designer.  He grew up in Dublin in the 1950s and 1960s. He studied architecture at UCD in Earlsfort Terrace from 1965 to 1970. His practice, now called ARC Consultants, covers architecture, photography, graphic design, historic building survey, digital modelling and animation; as well as consultancy in a number of areas relating to conservation and planning.

All the photographs that form part of this exhibition ‘Before’ were taken in Dublin between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s. Most of the photographs arise simply from the habit of carrying a camera at all times.  #tradfest  #otheredvoices 

 

Irish women who played an equal part in Irish Freedom and the struggle for equality

Charlotte Despard, Helena Moloney, Elizabeth O Farrell, Kathleen Clarke, Madeleine French Mullen, Mary Ellen Spring Rice, Grace Gifford, Countess Markievicz, Dr. Kathleen Lynn, Máire Ni Shiúibhlaigh, Linda Kearns, Jennie Wyse Power, Hanna Sheehy Skeffinton, Kate O Callaghan, Margaret Skinneder, Mary Mac Swiney, May Gibney, Maud Gonne...How many of these women do you know of?
They have been written into the footnotes of history but were a vital component in the struggle for freedom, equality and independence in Ireland. Largely kept on the margins their courageous outstanding contribution in Irish History will be firmly established by Sinead McCoole in her presentation at the Irish Stock Exchange on Tuesday 22nd Jan at 1pm (Admission Free) 'Other Voices - Unmanageable and Disreputable Women - #otheredvoices #tradfest

OTHERED VOICES (Farcry Productions and Temple Bar Company-Tradfest)

OtheredVoices-BillA3Poster.pdf Download this file

Othered' a term which refers to the act of emphasizing perceived weaknesses of maginalized groups and individuals as a way of stressing the alleged strength of those in positions of power

Irish Stock Exchange, Temple Bar, Dublin 22/23rd January

 Farcry Productions and Temple Bar Company present

On Tuesday Jan 22nd and Wednesday Jan 23rd Farcry Productions and Temple Bar Company are presenting a series of events at the Irish Stock Exchange in Temple Bar Dublin.  

The events consist of performance, talks and an exhibition projection (at Bernardo Square City Hall, Dublin)

OTHERED VOICES - Performance nights-8pm

Jan 22/23 - @ Irish Stock Exchange, 28 Anglesea St., Temple Bar,Dublin 2

JINX LENNON in performance
plus
Ophelia McCabe and MissElayneous

 
€6 entrance fee   8pm sharp- limited seating

VOICING IT -  Talk Series-22/23rd Jan at 1pm
Time: 1pm 
Venue:  Irish Stock Exchange, Temple Bar

22nd   Talk by RAY YEATES - CEO Temple Bar Cultural Trust/Dublin City Arts         Officer

23rd   Talk by SINEAD MC COOLE - Author/Historian/Curator

BEFORE  - by Bill Hastings   22nd-27th Jan 
photographic exhibition projection
at Bernardo Square, City Hall Dublin - 5pm-11pm daily

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