PopUp Conversations: To the Point Welcome! Fáilte! As part of the inaugural Pop-Up Dublin Biennial, Dublintellectual and the NUIM Space&Place Research Collaborative are curating a series of creative and scholarly interventions that explore the literary, musical, cinematic, architectonic, embodied, cultural, political, historical and lived spaces of the city. The PopUp Conversations bring together artists, architects, performers, cultural practitioners and scholars to create, perform and raise questions about art and the city. As Biennial Director Maggie Magee explains, Conversations provides a forum to discuss how we, as global citizens, might reflect and and possibly even consider how to reclaim a society and space that need ‘re-addressing’. Sessions include screenings, installations, performances and a walking tour of the Docklands. Taking place over the course of the exhibition week, we invite an interested public to explore what makes Dublin a world city for art, culture and scholarship through Conversations. Our themes include: Joyce in Music and Film Everyday Life in the City Art and Architecture Art as Public Life Reclaiming Space in the City Why Dublin? Memory as Art If the artist offers publics the materials, questions and forms to (re)interrogate our cities, then the citizen-public intellectual should create opportunities for respectful encounters and conversations with others. With more than forty local and international artists, scholars and community leaders, and ten artistic and interdisciplinary scholarly collaboratives, Conversations is an integral part of such a socio-artistic interaction. The wide breadth of contributors is evidence of the rich intellectual and cultural capital we possess. We wish to extend our deepest gratitude to all those who are taking part, in front of and behind the scenes. Our rich list of sponsors and volunteers at the end of this publication attest to the generosity of all those who made Conversations possible. The willingness of so many to make their time and expertise available to us is indicative of the collaborative trend that has reached a groundswell across the city. We believe that we have entered a new era of cultural revivification, of public engagement and collaboration a trend that is serving to reinvent the city of Dublin as we know it. -- Dr. Marisa Ronan and Dr. Karen E. Till, Curators of Conversations Credits: Front cover: Jeu Parti, Michelle Browne; above: The Drovers, film still, Rionach Ní Néill (choreographer) and Joe Lee (filmography); back cover: Niche by Fearghus Ó Conchúir (2008) photographed by Jonathan Mitchell. PopUp Conversations: To the Point Bloomsday: Joyce in Music and Film Saturday 16 June 2012 To celebrate Bloomsday, our opening day explores the spectres of Joyce in our lives, cityscapes, and artistic works, in particular through music and film. The day includes live musical performances, films, musical compositions, and a discussion with artists and scholars. We begin with a live concert by Luka Bloom, followed by a screening of the film shorts and compositions commissioned for the 2004 ‘ReJoyce’ project. Presented in association with the Contemporary Music Centre, the film shorts will be introduced by composer Vincent Kennedy, and discussed by artists and scholars. We then consider how these musical arts films, as well as director Sean Walsh’s feature film Bloom (2003), Film still, Bloom, directed by Sean Walsh, 2003 were inspired by Joyce’s Ulysesses. After Professor Luke Gibbon’s introduces Bloom, he, with director Sean Walsh. will discuss how these artistic works continue to be inspired by Joycean words, rhythms and imaginary geographies. We end with a screening of Bloom (2003), presented in association with Stoney Roads Films and the Odeon Point Village. 5pm: Point Village Plaza Luka Bloom’s Day Ride: Songs from This New Morning Luka Bloom is one the most celebrated Irish songwriters of his generation. Brought up in Newbridge, he went to the US in 1987 and took Luka Bloom as a stage name, in part a tribute to Joyce’s Leopold Bloom. This New Morning (http://www.lukabloom.com/shop/this-new-morning/) is his first release of new material since his acclaimed 2009 Eleven Songs. On this Bloomsday Luka Bloom is cycling around Dublin and singing songs at various breaks in his journey; one of which will be a PopUp Concert at the Dublin Biennial. He will begin his ‘Luka Bloom’s Day Ride’ at the Cafe du Journal in Monkstown, cycle to Dublin city, given an in store album launch concert in Celtic Note at 1pm, visit to The Bike Festival in Fade Street and perform at The Point at 5:00 pm. See: http://www.lukabloom.com/news/the- luka-bloomsday-ride/. 5:30-6:00pm: Odeon Point Village (Re)Joyced: Conversations about Ulysses in Composition and Film Presented in association with the Contemporary Music Centre. Three film shorts with original musical compositions will be introduced by composer Vincent Kennedy, and followed by discussion with artists and scholars. Commissioned in 2004 by the Contemporary Music Centre, Temple Bar Properties and the Association of Irish Compsers as part of the ‘ReJoyce in Music’ on the occasion of the 100th Bloomsday Festival, composers were invited to write music based upon or inspired by James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses. Following this, each composer worked with a filmaker to produce these three artistic shorts. The Great Leveller (2004) Composed by Vincent Kennedy; visuals by Katie Lincoln. Performers include: Susan Doyle (flute), Deirdre O’Leary (clarinet), Richard O’Donnell (percussion) and Rhian McLeod (percussion). Musical recording conducted by Vincent Kennedy. Kennedy remarks that ‘Death is the great ‘leveller,’ and adds that this piece of music was inspired by Paddy Dignam’s funeral.’ Myriorama (Penelope Sleeps) (2004) Composed by Rob Canning; visuals by Katie Lincoln. Performers : Susan Doyle (flute), Síle Daly (oboe), Deirdre O’Leary (clarinet), Ian Dakin (french horn), Richard O’Donnell (percussion) and Rhian McLeod (percussion). Canning tells us that: ‘This piece of music was inspired by Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy at the end of Ulysses’. AfterJoyce 1 (2004) Composed by Benjamin Dwyer; visuals by Del 9. Performers: Susan Doyle (flute), Richard O’Donnell (percussion). Dwyer advises us that ‘This musical monologue emanates from new territory that is neither word nor music’. Discussion to follow with artists and scholars: Vincent Kennedy, Composer Sean Walsh, Director of Bloom Chair and Discussant: Professor Gerry Kearns, Geography, NUI Maynooth 2 6:00-7pm: Odeon Point Village Ulysses as a feature film: Conversations about Joycean legacies Generously sponsored by Stoney Road Films and Odeon Point Village. Sean Walsh perhaps made the film Bloom (2003) for all those people who have been put off reading Ulysses by virtue of its reputation as a very difficult novel. In the film, he focuses upon the narrative elements of the book and, with Hugh O'Connor as Joyce's alter-ego Stephen Dedalus, Angeline Ball as the voluptuous Molly Bloom, and Stephen Rea as the humanitarian fetishist, Leopold Bloom, Walsh produces three plausible and intriguing characters. This is a painless way to become familiar with the events of the book but it is also much more than that. In Bloom’s misadventures with the dominatrix Bella Cohen in the brothel in the Monto district, Walsh produces something psychedelic enough to capture the shape-shifting of that bizarre evening. Dublin is shown in warm colours for much of the earlier episodes of the film; the humanistic aspects of the novel are well served by the production, by the generosity of Rea’s portrayal of Bloom, by turns diffident and brave, and by Molly's lusty embracing of her sexual appetite. The film is sexy, humane, and funny. For those still inhaling deeply before plunging into the novel, the film can indeed serve as a narrative encouragement. For those who already love the book, the film provokes reflections about the less easily filmed experimental and literary aspects of the novel. For those who already love both novel and film, well ... you already Bloom, dir. Sean Walsh, 2003 know you will want to hear a conversation about the film with Director Sean Walsh and Joyce expert Professor Luke Gibbons, as well as watch it again on this Bloomsday. Invited speakers: Professor Luke Gibbons, Department of English, NUI Maynooth Sean Walsh, Director of Bloom Chair: Professor Gerry Kearns, Geography, NUI Maynooth 7-9pm: Odeon Point Village Feature Film: Bloom (2003), Directed by Sean Walsh The most recent adaptation of the most famous 20th century novel in the English language, James Joyce’s Ulysses, this film stars award- winning Angeline Ball and Stephen Rea. This is a deeply touching human journey of love lost and regained and life lived to the full. 3 PopUp Conversations: To the Point Everyday Life in the City Monday 18 June 2012 This day explores how the urban context directly influences and is influenced by everyday experiences, group conduct and social meanings. Inspired by theorists Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and Walter Benjamin, as well as by the Situationists, we explore through film and reading groups such questions as: How do transnational processes of globalisation and immigration bring some peoples (and not others) into contact? How are such situations and social relations framed by and imbued with power? Is there such a thing as a global sense of place? What is the nature of body-city encounters? What new ways of inhabiting the city might be made possible through attention to the practices of everyday life? 3-5:30pm: Odeon Point Village Cinema Feature Film: Trafficked (2010), directed by Ciaran O’Connor Generously sponsored by Stoney Road Films and Odeon Point Village. To the modern European city of Dublin comes another new recruit to the sex trade. Trafficked in the back of a van, a young African girl, Taiwo, believes she is about to start a new life free from the oppression at home.