black_ball

Eileen is one among the thousands who moved to Dublin from the country in the sixties and seventies in search of work; to Dubliners they were culchies (Dubliners were Jackeens!). She lived in No. 8 Upper Clanbrassil street, and walked to work every day down Clanbrassil Street and along the quays to her job near Heuston Station. The house is still there, if a little tattered. The street, once the centre of the Jewish community in Dublin and fictitious birthplace of Leopold Bloom, was widened in the 1980’s and turned into a high-speed thoroughfare. Take a walk down Clanbrassil Street now and you’ll find a regiment of Spar stores - milk and newspaper purveyors - have replaced small shops and industries. Noise levels are so high that in normal conversation a voice cannot be heard, and a sad imitation of an urban fabric lines the streets.

PREMISES

Project Statement

PRACTICES

PLACES

You'll come and find the place

Brookfield to Dublin Castle

PRODUCTION

Moving Dublin explores the everyday world of movement in Dublin and its vast sprawling suburbs spreading out west from the coastal city. We look at how far the contemporary world of the Dublin commuter has strayed from the civic realm it constituted when Joyce wrote the Wandering Rocks chapter of Ulysses.

Moving Dublin is to be published in the form of a book and DVD in March 2009 by Gandon Editions

Moving Dublin has been commissioned by South Dublin County Council through In Context 3 and funded under the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government’s Per Cent for Art Scheme.

BLACK BALL GOWN

Written by Eileen Casey

Read by Ann O’Neill

11’19”

Audio, 11’19”