‘Reading Ulysses’ Oonagh Young

From now until just after Bloomsday, you can watch and read the more than 265,000 words that make up James Joyce’s masterpiece as they appear in the LED display in CCI’s courtyard!

As one of the most famous books that many have never read, or never finish, 'Reading Ulysses’ LED is a way of (re)introducing people to the text. LED ticker tape is an ubiquitous part of modern city life and Oonagh Young uses it to directly reference Leopold Bloom as a man who works in advertising. Displaying all 730 pages of Ulysses in this way deliberately plays with the utilitarian application of these signs and aims to highlight the universality of the experiences Bloom encounters throughout his day.

‘Reading Ulysses’ LED was created as part of the Treeline project that took place in Dublin (2017 – 2019) based in Oonagh Young Gallery on James Joyce Street. This project emerged in response to this much maligned area of Dublin’s north inner city previously referred to as Monto. This is where Joyce located the Nighttown or Circe episode of Ulysses. From being one of the largest red light districts in Europe, it subsequently suffered from a drug epidemic in the 1980s and has continued to be marginalised to this day. The Treeline Project aimed to activate and bring together a variety of communities living and working in the area by highlighting this direct link to Joyce and thereby changing the cultural narrative.

With the support of DFA, Culture Ireland and the University of Notre Dame.