Temple Bar .org
Latest Update:
I have re-acquired the temple-bar.org domain and I am currently renovating the project. I expect it will be available in an archived form shortly.
Update October 2002 - the temple-bar.org domain name is gone (it
was lost due to incompetance or maliciousness on behalf of domain
name registration company namesecure.com - you are warned) The site
as it was is archived here (will randomly open a page from the exhibition refresh the browser to load another). I
have saved some searchs from when the domain name was active and will
put these live soon.
When I was asked to contribute to the Graham Parker curated '
We're Not Really Here' . at the Project
Arts Centre I was casting around for ideas on the theme of place and
Temple Bar. Almost ny first reaction was to check availability of
domain names and was surprised to find that the domain name www.temple-bar.org
was still available and immediately purchased it two weeks before
the exhibition start for the princely sum of $35. But I was puzzled,
why was it still available. Was Temple Bar, the area of the city which
symbolises most Dublin's status as European High tech boom town, not
interested in staking their place on the web? Why were they happy
to let anyone buy up such a valuable name. Had they learned nothing
from the travails of our Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the scandal of
bertieahern.com ?
Another thought was also in my head, for years there has been a ongoing
war of attrition between Temple Bar properties and artists based in
Temple Bar with artists feeling that they are being pushed out to
make way for more shopping opportunities and expensive apartments,
artists felt that they were Temple Bar not the company set up to develop
the area.
Why this sense of ownership, well a little history will explain: Temple
Bar Properties and the regeneration project that led to Temple Bar
today owes it's very existance to the fact that when the area was
marked for demolition for a bus station it was colonised by artists
in search of cheap rents. The place became such a thriving lively
area that the government stepped in, saved it from demolition and
spent millions to regenerate it as Dublin's cultural quarter.
So if Temple Bar properties didn't want their name I decided to rescue
it from the hoards of porn peddling cyber-squatters waiting to get
their grubby hands on it and to set up a parallel Temple Bar website
which would virtually reclaim Dublin's cultural quarter for Artists.
For the duration (ends 22nd October 2001) of the exhibition at The
Project ( the original Temple Bar arts organisation) this site
will offer a new short piece on the theme of Temple every second day.
As part of the project I will compete in internet search engines with the official
Temple Bar Properties website to offer an alternative site to surfers
who search for the term Temple Bar Dublin's Cultural Quarter
, to assist in this I have purchased these keywords in Google for October and December 2001.
Conor McGarrigle
October 2001
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