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STATEMENT by DONALD
JORDAN, IRISH HISTORIAN:
Belfast is
a graceless nineteenth century town of brick and iron, whose
streets still ring with the thunder of "Roaring" Hugh
Hanna and Sir Edward Carson. A decaying industrial town, its
tight grid iron of red brick houses once sheltered the families
of farmers, spinners and weavers who became the shipyard, mill
and textile workers for industrial Belfast. It has never been
a city kind to its residents. It was built up so they could be
devoured in the factories and shipyards, while sectarianism has
transformed the rows of terrace houses of West Belfast into divided
neighborhoods bearing names like Shankill Road and Falls Road.
Tangles of wire, corrugated iron and concrete now act as barricades
between the residents of identical streets, preventing them from
seeing, hearing, or harming each other. Despite this bleakness,
Belfast was, in the words of one Falls Road resident, "a
good wee town once," when "cinemas, theaters, music
halls and shops were packed" and when houses were a family's
refuge in the daily struggle for survival. However, she added,
"things will never be the same again." Unemployment
(approaching 40% in some neighborhoods) and fourteen years of
violence and intervention have left Belfast, especially West
Belfast, a battle zone --- burned out and boarded up. Douglas
Holmes' relief sculptures cry out with the restrained voice of
deeply-felt passion, not for a United Ireland or a protestant
state, but for the people whose arched doorways are boarded up
and windows are shuttered with steel mesh. These reliefs provide
a frightening commentary on the state of "civilized society,"
not just in Belfast, but in Beirut, Gdansk, San Salvador, or
Detroit. They capture the despair of a wounded city. The bricked-up
facades of houses, shops and theaters standing amid rubble of
stone and glass bear silent witness to the tragedy that is Belfast.
Yet, unlike the over two-thousand people who have been killed
in Ulster since 1969, the shattered buildings could be revived
as part of a rebirth of Belfast. These pieces challenge us to
waver between hope and despair and to confront our own responsibility.
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