#TransitGateway - As part of “Port Perspectives”, the project Transit Gateway documents the transitional changes of the shape of Dublin Port from its medieval shoreline to its current infrastructure. The penultimate seminar takes place next week in The LAB, Foley Street in Dublin City centre on Wednesday, 27 Sept.
Transit Gateway is an artistic mapping cartography that shows the changing connections of the city and the port throughout the years, and how the port as a gateway creates a vital connection of the city with the wider world. In collaboration with partners and the local community, the artist Silvia Loeffler has been commissioned by Dublin Port Company to create a social and collaborative artistic mapping project that looks at the port ‘s transitional phases over a time period of 9 months.
A large-scale installation series loosely based on the various maps used by H.A. Gilligan in his “History of the Port of Dublin” is currently being created, and the works are displayed in the Terminal 1 Building in Dublin Port. Each month, a new map layer will be added to the installation.
Each month, a specific seminar, which is held in the LAB in order ‘to bring the port back into the city’, accompanies a specific map layer.
“Dublin Port from 1965 to 1986/ Transition” is the eighth seminar in this series. This time period was marked by the building of two new bridges spanning the River Liffey: Talbot Memorial Bridge linking Custom House Quay on the Northside to City Quay on the Southside was completed in 1978, and the East Link (today its formal name is Tom Clarke Bridge) with its connecting toll bridge approach road opened in 1984 to bridge Ringsend to the North Wall.
Yet again, another significant amount of reclaimed lands opposite Clontarf added to the port expansion. Container terminals were added to the Southside at Poolbeg, and so was the Corporation Sludge Jetty, together with ESB Poolbeg Station and the ESB Tanker Jetty. On the Northside, B&I Freight Terminal, the first car ferry terminal and the deepwater No.5 Ro-ro berth were added. The Sealink Freight Terminal was built on the last stretch of the port’s heartland on the Northside.
We hope that you are able to join us with the discussion of this particular era, when Dublin City saw throngs of people leave by boat for England for employment. The port became divided into zones, and the ships’ total cargo was now being carried in containers, a concept started in the 1950s and 60s. The total change from break-bulk to containerised cargo was regarded as revolutionary (comparable to the groundbreaking change from sail to steamships in the 1800s). We will elaborate on the meanings of “transition” in a socio-economic and urban context as well as in psychological terms. We will furthermore connect associations of container landscapes and port zones with everyday life experiences. What does it mean to be working in a port? What is it like to be travelling in and out of Dublin by sea on a regular basis?
Speaker panel:
Niamh Cherry Moore (geographer)
Michael McLoughlin (artist and researcher)
Derek McGauley (port security; Terminal 1)
Seminar Registration: This seminar is the eighth in a series of nine. The event is free, but places are limited. Please make sure to register by clicking here. in addition for a bio of each of the speakers.
The Transit Gateway seminars are part of a wider public engagement programme for Port Perspectives 2017. They are funded by Dublin Port Company and the LAB Gallery.
Dublin Port's 2017 Port Perspectives / Engagement Programme has been developed in collaboration with Dublin City Council, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, UCD School of Architecture, National College of Art and Design, Irish Architecture Foundation, Create [the National Collaborative Arts Agency] and Business to Arts.
Dr Silvia Loeffler is an artist, researcher and educator in Visual Culture. She is the organiser of the Transit Gateway seminars, funded by Dublin Port Company, and run in close collaboration with the LAB. This seminar series will continue until October 2017 and is part of Silvia's artistic cartography 'Transit Gateway: A Deep Mapping of Dublin Port'.
https://silvialoeffler.wordpress.com/