#TransitGateway - A Deep Mapping of Dublin Port by Silvia Loeffler is at this stage of the Transit Gateway project approaching Mapping Phase 5: Dublin Port from 1898 to 1929 / Turbulent Times.
The next event is to be held at the following time, date and location:
Wednesday, 28 June 2017 from 18:15 to 20:15
The LAB Gallery, 1 Foley Street, Dublin 1
NOTE: This free seminar is the fifth event in a series of nine, but places are limited so please make sure to register here.
As part of “Port Perspectives”, Transit Gateway is a project that documents the transitional changes of the shape of Dublin Port from its medieval shoreline to its current infrastructure. The changes of the port as a gateway to the city bring to mind the void of communication of the 18th century on the ships before Marconi, the forced emigrations of the 19th century, the modern context of maritime holiday migration that shaped the 20th century, and which now extends itself to the cruise business the 21st century, and how cargo volumes changed over the centuries in terms of goods, locations and quantity.
Transit Gateway is an artistic mapping cartography that will show 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 will be held in the LAB on Foley Street, in order ‘to bring the port back into the city’, will accompany the map layer.
“Dublin Port from 1898 to 1929/ Turbulent Times” is the fifth seminar in this series. We will refer to the port as a reflection of Dublin City as “Nighttown”, as Joyce would have it. Dublin’s red light district covering the inner city was situated around Faithful Place (on what is now Railway Street), the “World’s End Lane” that was part of Montgomory Street (now Foley Street, home of the LAB Gallery) and Mabbot Street (now James Joyce Street). The dark sides of frolicking and sexual disease were rampant in the Monto, which was conveniently bounded by Amien Street Station, Gardiner Street and Talbot Street, and the Port - with the Custom House, the docks and berthages for trading vessels from overseas only a stone’s throw away. The area was deprived, rent was cheap, and the inner city tenements were home to the numerous men working on the dockyards and quays along the Liffey and their families.
Alexandra Quay was often congested because cargo ships competed for berthage spaces, and shallow water in the river channel of the Liffey continued to be a major problem. Dutch firm was contracted to remove the sand from the bar with a suction dredger and to pump the vast amount ashore at the Graving Dock, which was situated on the newly reclaimed lands. Public lighting along the quays was put into place, the timber jetties used by Gouldings and the American Oil company were extended, the new electricity generating station replaced “animal power”, and the use of electric cranes and electric capstans became a common sight.
In 1913, labour disputes in the tenement areas put the inner city into paralysis, but works in the port, albeit under immense difficulty, carried on. At the outbreak of World War I, military forces took over the North Wall extension and Alexandra Quay, and when the Irish Free State came into existence in 1922, the Port urgently needed extra bonded transit sheds and warehouses, as imports from Britain were no longer exempt from customs regulations. In 1923, a labour dispute with seamen, dockers and port workers erupted and sea trade became seriously affected. The miner strike of 1926 in Britain challenged the import of coal into the port, which meant that the dredging programme was immensely difficult to keep up.
We hope that you are able to join us with the discussion of this particular era where the cattle ban came in and Dublin City and Port were shaped by the turbulence of labour disputes, war years, and the thrall of Joycean “wisps and danger signals”.
Speaker panel:
Gerry Kearns (health geographer)
Sheena Barrett (curator of the LAB Gallery)
Robert Nicholson (curator of the Joyce Tower)
For a bio of each speaker, click here and scroll down the page.
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/
