Monthly Archives: February 2012

Time remains (some) for the transmigration of the soul of James Joyce’s Ulysses into this overwrought ultra-modern life, through you, with you, and in you, and, penultimately, out of you and into the world, anew. Yes, through you! But you must be prompt: time ceases on Monday 27 February, per the rules of this game.

I beseech you. Take us beyond the Bloomin’ readings! There surely are myriad modes of imagining that remain untouched and untried but true to Ulysses and the 16th of June. Just close your eye and see them. Adaptions. Contraptions. Do you see them now? (now?)

You, Sound Engineer! Take me inside Marion (Molly) Bloom’s head to hear for the first time the sweet rise & falling cacaphony of her interwined strands of voice and memory and clutter and love.

You, Pod Caster! Why not try to capture clearly a raucous yet ardent argument of pivotal points of Ulysses amongst a gaggle of pint-lifters as they dig deep deeper down into the soil of one page.

You, Sign Maker and Scholar! Would it kill you just once to walk the streets of Dublin in absolute silence (monk-like) in a nice orderly single file to become a wandering sentence from Ulysses with placards you hold in front of you (H.E.L.Y’S-like)? I mean do you think you could manage it?

And You, Pub Crawler! With all the handhelds and wireless surrounding us and the excess grey power in your noggin, do you think you could match Joycean’s around the world in a global trivia night/pub quiz for Bloomsday?

Yeah, there was a touch of the artist in old Bloom and it only stands to reason there is a touch of the artist in you too. So get to it! Propose something enlightening to LiberateUlysses this year, this very day, this very instant. — Steve Cole, Baltimore

This spring a new stage adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses will bloom in Cincinnati, Ohio. We talked with the playwright, Alison Vodnoy Wolf, about how she did it — converted the 900+ page experimental novel into a 2-hour stage production. Here’s what she had to say. And we’ve posted more information on her project and the Kickstarter fundraising campaign she’s launch to support it in our Works in Progress section.

We’re just four days into the project after our 1 Feb launch and making pretty good progress. Several individuals and groups got in touch right away about Ulysses projects they have already embarked. We also received our first LiberateUlysses project proposal! And we had a short write-up by Will Pavia in The Times of London (3 Feb).

On 2 February, Joyce’s birthday and the 90th anniversary of the publication of Ulysses, we heard from University College Dublin about their colorful #joycequotes video series, which runs daily all the way to Bloomsday. And from London we heard about artist Steve Williams’ Ulysses-inspired exhibit that opens 9 February at the Free Space Gallery. The exhibit runs through 2 April. And then there was the newly published 3D ebook version of Ulysses and a stage adaptation underway in Ohio. All in all a good head-spinning birthday for Mr. Joyce, and good to see so many people on the same creative wavelength.

And now a question for you — Would you be interested in chatting with the people behind some of these creative Ulysses projects? We’re looking into arranging that online via the LiberateUlysses Facebook page, if there’s enough interest and that particular online platform is easiest for most of you. Could be interesting and inspirational for anyone considering their own LiberateUlysses projects. (Remember, the deadline for proposals is 27 February.) Post your comment here, if you please. Thanks!

The Bloomsday celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses this year is going to be a very special one. The novel marks its ninetieth year in book form and its first year of freedom from copyright restrictions throughout the European Union. What better moment for Ulysses readers, lovers, and scholars to marshal their imaginative and creative powers for a collective global exhibition of what Ulysses means to us!

In 2011 we added a day-long reading of Ulysses on Twitter to the Bloomsday celebrations, a rendering of the novel in extreme short form by dozens of Joyceans from around the world. New media such as Twitter give us a new way to build a global Bloomsday celebration and community. This year we plan to open the floodgates of all media – social, new, and traditional – to see how the world liberates Ulysses using the connectivity and creativity provided by all these tools now in our hands.

Here is the plan, if you want to participate. You possess a very personal appreciation of Joyce’s Ulysses. You also possess a unique aggregation of creative and expressive styles. LiberateUlysses encourages you to bring those two parts of yourself together to produce your own personal interpretation of Ulysses and share it with others. The world will certainly be a richer place as a result.

Revisit a chapter, a scene, a theme, or a line from Ulysses and render the impression it made on you in the medium or art form of your choice. Illuminate what you saw, what you felt, so that others can experience what you did as Joyce took you deep into the heart of his Hibernian metropolis. This LiberateUlysses blog will chronicle the creative experience of your work in progress and bring the results together in an online exhibition on Bloomsday, 16 June 2012.

The choice of expressive media is entirely open. Be experimental. Starting with the Bloomsday staple of dramatic readings, your options expand into sound recordings … street art … environmental art … sculpture … song cycles … a single song … Livestream … Ustream … YouTube … book arts … billboards … broadsides … film … photographs … Flickr … visionary art … video … Vimeo … written word … spoken word … woodcuts … webcasts … podcasts … webpages … illuminated pages … printmaking … painting … poetry … postcards … comics … murals … music … mosaics … calligraphy … tragicomedy routines … dance … and mashups of any of the above. Again we encourage you to be experimental (a la Ulysses).

If your creation is fixed in space and time, you will need to devise a way to share it with others online. Make a video, a photo gallery, or a rambling blog post or podcast that describes (or better yet, shows) the how and why of what you’ve created. Needless to say, please work within the confines of the legal limitations (or lack thereof) where you live.

LiberateUlysses will serve as the virtual gallery for your creations and a general resource for other liberating Bloomsday activities around the world. We will be taking the collective outpourings of LiberateUlysses to Dublin in June for a presentation at the 23^rd International James Joyce Symposium.

To submit your project for consideration, email your name, contact information, and a one-page description of your project to [email protected] by 27 February. The deadline for completed works is 4 June (exceptions made for projects designed to take place on Bloomsday).

To encourage discussion of LiberateUlysses ideas and facilitate collaborations, join us on Facebook and follow @2lysses on Twitter (#LiberateUlysses).

We have more LiberateUlysses ideas brewing that we will be announcing in the coming months. For example, we are working with the James Joyce Centre in Dublin to create new ways to bring the Bloomsday celebration to the world.

— Steve Cole, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

P.S. We are planning a second Twitter rendition of Ulysses for Bloomsday 2012, but are changing the rules of engagement so that many more can join in. We’ll shorten the event from 24 hours to 18 – one hour for each episode of the novel – and enlist the magic of hashtags. More details to come.