- DUBLIN (Reuters) - Mysterious parachutes
carrying steel tubes which this week sparked a security alert in southern
Ireland and feverish speculation of alien or Russian action were in fact
the work of artists, angry police said on Wednesday.
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- "They didn't fall out of the sky.
They came off the back of a van," Annette Clancy, artistic director
at Garter Lane Arts Center in Waterford, told Reuters.
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- "It's my responsibility that this
sort of hysteria is avoided and the public at large are protected,"
Superintendent Michael McGarry said after police called on bomb experts,
navigation officials and defense forces to help work out the meaning of
the objects found in Waterford city early on Monday.
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- McGarry said in a statement that he was
informing state prosecutors about the case and that he was "terribly
annoyed."
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- Clancy's group named the artist as Paul
Gregg, who police said was a U.S. native resident in Ireland for four years.
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Gardai examine the parachutes with tubular
frames which landed in Waterford
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- The hoax caught the imagination of the
whole country and media, who have been speculating wildly about the parachutes
and their one meter long cylinders holding test tubes filled with silt
and water.
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- This was exactly what the artists had
in mind, though they had not expected a mini security alert.
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- Clancy said the aim of the action was
... "to stimulate debate and discussion about what art is intended
to do."
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- "When people go into a gallery they
expect to have all the answers provided. We are very pleased with the outcome
of this. Waterford has become a center of debate," Clancy said.
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- However, she said the group had become
"seriously concerned" on hearing police -- accustomed to security
alerts because of the Northern Irish conflict -- had called out a bomb
disposal unit.
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- "We hadn't envisaged that scenario.
The irony is the artist drove around at 4 a.m. and unloaded the things
all over the city, but no one came forward," she said.
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- "They were constructed out of metal,
string and see-through test tubes. They were meant to look like scientific
objects, not paramilitary paraphernalia," she added.
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- Police at Waterford have been inundated
with calls since Monday and were not amused, despite an apology from the
art group and a tribute from Clancy for their vigilance.
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- "I've the greatest headache a man
ever had," grumbled Sergeant David Sheehan.
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