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Harry Potter and The Bogside Artists' Book
Sep 15th, 2009 by woof

Just to let everyone know we have updated our Travels with Li Po website. This website is devoted exclusively to the book written by one of us ( William) all about a young orphaned boy who is lost in a parallel world and doesn’t know he is a sorcerer. Yea, sounds corny and fantastical and we made it all up, didn’t we?  It is in fact all true and alarmingly so. We KNOW it to be true. Find out for yourself  by clicking on the book icon. TheTravels with Li Pon, be astonished. Be very astonished; and when you are done being astonished see if you can answer the simple questions the book  poses by its sheer existence and why it is such a hot potato for newspapers in general. Here is a hint……starts with ‘p’ and ends with ‘tics”.

We have placed a button on the pages linking to an abridged version of the numerous similarities between Harry Potter and Wills’ book for your instruction – THE  SIMILARITIES – Synopsis  it’s called. This is in deference to modern readers who find it difficult to read more than two sentences in a row without getting dizzy. Pay particular attention to the brief introduction that goes with it. If you have any other questions feel free to contact us.

In the meantime, Adrian Jacobs’ posse  is preparing to begin its charge on Rowling and Co. for a mere half billion pounds, declaring, in so many words, that that is what the deceased would have been worth for his contribution (?) to the Harry Potter bonanza. De plot tickens, as they say down South.  Mind you, the Rowling boys have had a decade to prepare for just this eventuality. And with so much preparation and mini-rehearsals you have to wonder why they haven’t had a go  at us, as we have no doubt whatever that we are the main event, Rowling’s worst nightmare indeed, as you will quickly learn if you visit the site.  What are they afraid of? Evidence my friends. Evidence that would damn them all. It is a rhetorical question indeed, one of the best. And of course, the scandal. What would the neighbours think? Especially those American neighbours who have capitalized hand over fist on the Potter ‘phenomenon’ and its Britanic  pedigree that stretches all the way to the  corridors of  ‘smarter-than-thou’ Oxford, every Yankee egghead’s pet fantasy, albeit paling into nothing beside the enshrined American Dream…  Hugh Hefner’s throne.

It will be mighty interesting indeed to see what comes of it all, especially for us who are privy to the real truth that no English paper dare touch or Irish paper for that matter. Cowards all! So much for freedom of speech. As for freedom of the press…that depends on who can threaten the responsible editors most efficiently. The toy bear in that regard goes to Schillings, Rowling’s lawyers, based in London who have a knack of frightening the life-insurance out of everybody they go near in the manner of Darth Vader in a barrister’s wig.  We pause here to wonder if we got that right. Maybe Schillings  have jumped ship in the meantime and we get a letter from them in the morning telling us to recant our “inaccuracies’ and ‘false statements” or face ruin. Dat’s the way dem dudes work …. like a police-helicopter tracking a suspect vehicle, at night, all lights blaring, its deafening megaphonic words soaring over the rooftops. Pensioners awake in their beds searching for the lamp-switch wondering who the hell has the right, etc, etc.  One cannot be too careful these days.  

Scrutiny, all joking aside, is what the Rowling gang are avoiding, pure and simple. Incredible to us how this obvious fact, this necessary but deplorable, puerile bloody strategy they have been implementing for years  is either ignored or swept under the carpet by the  media in toto. But then, we are talking about jolly old England, old bean, Rule Britannia and all that…. and Harry The Prince Potter, of course, who is but John Bull Junior on a stick flying the old Imperial flag over the subdued and conquered with all the fatuous panache of an ageing Caesar in a squeaky chariot doing a triumphal circuit of the Circus Maximus just before the games, strapped to his vehicle in case he falls off.  What ever happened to good old TRUTH? we ask ourselves.  Has it been sacrificed in our ‘post-modern world ‘ to the shenanigans of Chaos Theory? Truth, like art, is whatever I decide it to be, or so we must subscribe to if we wouldst call ourselves ‘contemporary’, (fancy wording for ‘Trumpism’ or economic expediency-whatever-the-cost-to-others. “You’re fired boyo! Take up your dreams and leave the premises!”). ”Greed is good” indeed says Wall Street, even if on film, just as genocide is ‘ethnic cleansing’ effected with duster and polish and a nice clean apron…. and Harry Potter is the real deal.  Maggie’s ”ugly face of capitalism”, in other words, is whatever mask you choose to wear and whatever script you choose to espouse that will enable you to stash your pile  in the big steel box down at the bank. Our view is simple…. TRUTH WILL OUT, sooner or later. It goes on. It never goes away.  And we all  must stand up for it or cease to be human. 

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New Exhibition
Aug 13th, 2009 by woof

We are running a new exhibition at the gallery covering the Troubles. All are welcome. The gallery is now becoming a major art venue in Derry if not the North West and a landmark in the city. Situated right beside our People’s Gallery it is a must-visit for anybody interested in history, art, humanity, justice, freedom of expression and truth.

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Art, Meaning and Creative Freedom
Jul 26th, 2009 by woof

 

 

Art and the artist’s life

It is often asked of us, why we painted our murals and we have given an exhaustive account of why in our book  The People’s Gallery. In the excerpt below Solzhenitsyn throws a glaring light on the reason why artists cannot bow to violence whatever form it takes and why freedom of speech is the life and spirit of art and of a nation’s collective life.  Artistic expression is not just the voice of an individual but the voice of a people and the voice of mankind. He knew well enough, as do we , that the forces of violence against it and the truth it speaks emanate not from the ground up but from the political games-masters and bureaucratic functionaries who weild power ‘legally’ or otherwise from the top. Only when the media weed class privileges and affiliations out of its editorial policy and implant the democratic principles they are supposed to defend will we have freedom of speech proper. But that,  of course , is when the wheels fall off and truth takes over from media induces narcosis and collective hypnosis. And that too is when the oligarchs, the dictatorial executives and the incurable narcissists holding poitical office resort to what keeps them in power in the first place – the gun. Hear now from someone who paid dearly for what many among you striding meekly off to their places of work, swinging briefcases, trimly dressed and ever-so proud of their societal clout and Luciferian allegiances are hell-bent in preventing – your freedom to express – your creative birthright – your freedom of speech!

 

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

       “One Word of Truth…”

His Nobel Speech 1970

 

“But woe betide that nation whose literature is interrupted by the interference of force. This is not simply a violation of the ‘freedom of the press’; it is the locking up of the national heart, the carving up of the national memory. Such a nation does not remember itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and although its population supposedly have a common language, fellow countrymen suddenly stop understanding eachother. Mute generations live out their lives and die without telling either to their own or to a future generation. If such geniuses as Akhmatova or Zamyratin are walled up alive for the duration of their lives, if they are condemned to create in silence until the grave, without hearing any response to what they have written, then this is not just their personal misfortune but the deep tragedy of the whole nation – and too, a threat to the whole nation. And in certain cases it is a danger for the whole of mankind….when the whole of history ceases to be understood because of that silence.”

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