Clare McLaughlin: Bloomsday
For Bloomsday 2026, artist Clare McLaughlin staged Shut Your Eyes and See on Sandymount Strand: free, individual sensory sessions exploring James Joyce’s Ulysses through touch, sound and imagination, created for and with people living with sight loss, and funded by Dublin City Council through Creative Ireland’s Creative Communities. The brief was to capture the day honestly, without ever intruding on it, so both the participants and the work were honoured on screen.
The film follows Clare in her own words alongside the sessions themselves, participants moving through touch, sound and imagination on Sandymount Strand. Their sight loss was never the subject; it was the lens. What emerges is less a record of an art event than a portrait of attention, a single Bloomsday afternoon that let people experience Ulysses in a way the page never could.
A documentary that captures the spirit of the day for Clare’s own archive and future funding applications, and gives the project a life far beyond Sandymount Strand, ready to share with new audiences and collaborators.
