To celebrate the character of Molly Bloom and her climactic soliloquy in the last episode (XVIII) of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Arts Over Borders has commissioned the Derry artist and set designer Tracey Lindsay to create an imaginative Gulliver- size bed as an 8 day public art installation within the city’s former British Army fort, Ebrington Barracks. In Ulysses Episode XIII (Penelope), Molly utters her soliloquy in a stream of consciousness whilst lying in bed at around 3am, June 17 1904, just before dawn. We also learn in the episode that Molly was born in Gibraltar, brought up in a military family (father in the Dublin Royal Fusiliers) and she loved the sound of marching military bands. Ebrington Square today is Derry’s plaza answer to St. Petersburg’s Square – an equally majestic place of calm, surrounded by elegant buildings that offers a pleasant place to stroll and have special views across the Peace Bridge to the historic walled city.
8 is the symbolic number Joyce gave to Molly. She was born on September 8, and her soliloquy is eight very long sentences. The installation is available for viewing for 8 days only.
As part of the inaugural Molly Bloomsday, June 16, 2024, the YES 2024 SIRENSCIRCUS event will be performed around the Molly Bed at 16.00 on June 16.
Tracey Lindsay – Artistic Statement – The Molly Bed
For the concept and creation of ‘The Molly Bed’ I have concentrated on the accompanying title for Derry, ‘The Future: A Female Vision’. Within Molly Bloom’s continuous stream of thought, she mentions nature and refers to herself as being a flower.
“as a girl where I was a flower of the mountain”
“yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes”
I imagined the bed springing up from the bog land of Derry, breaking through the surface of Ebrington Square and flourishing.
“colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets”
The bed will be very large in scale, it will look like it began to push through the land many years ago, in 1904, when the play was set. As time passed, nature grew upon it and flowers bloomed. The bed changed with time, becoming part of nature, like a mountain within the land. It is representative of a woman’s strength, breaking up and through the glass ceiling and continuing to flourish as well as society being able to change with the times.
Joyce has Molly in bed with her husband Leopold for the final episode. I wanted the presence of their bodies to be visually represented but not seen. It is about the indents and shapes that Molly and Leopold make upon the landscape of their bed.
Two large pillows will be present, with the concaved weight of Molly and Leopold’s heads moulded into their pillow.
Also present is the shape of Molly’s body underneath the thin, turned down bedsheet, celebrating the curves of the female form. As the shoulders and head above the bedsheet are absent, this could be the shape of any female lying in bed, therefore representing us all.
The pillows and female form will be carved sculptures to look like marble, echoing Joyce’s Athenian influence from Homer’s Odyssey.
“I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses”
Flowers will bloom from the female form, being the epicentre of life and growth. Molly’s thoughts and flowers will travel and grow throughout the bed and up onto the large headboard. This headboard will be a large screen, showing filmed footage of Molly’s words being performed by well-known females.
The public are invited to write down their thoughts and aspirations for the future, placing them into Molly’s pillow, so that they may take root and bloom.
Tracey Lindsay
Credits
An original idea by DoranBrowne (Seán Doran and Liam Browne)
Bed Design – Tracey Lindsay
Commissioned and Produced by Arts Over Borders (producers of the wooden Trojan Horse in the Guildhall Square outside the Derry Walls for Lughnasa FrielFest 2018).
