This year’s exhibition is different. As graduates, we have had to adapt to new and challenging circumstances. Moving to an online environment, we had to think of alternate ways to make our Graduate Exhibition come to life. In its translation into a digital space, the very real and tactile nature of the work we produce is obscured. In our daily lives, there is a sense of human and material touch which is equally obscured. Working from home, graduates are in a new environment. Their creative output extends into their domestic lives as their studies come to a close. It is the parallel between the materiality of our work and the absence of the sense touch that frames this year’s Graduate Exhibition.

This website presents the work of 102 graduating students from the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts, School of Mechanical and Design Engineering and School of Media. The exhibition represents the culmination of years of full-time study and gives our students the opportunity to showcase the results of their imagination, hard work, and creative skills.

Identity by Joana Ferreira, Hugh Kavanagh, Eva Martin, Ben Nagle.

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts
TU Dublin School of Mechanical and Design Engineering
TU Dublin School of Media

Contemporary Visual Culture

Imogen Sweeney
From Place to Non-Place

Analysing the Tivoli theatre in order to understand the value placed upon cultural venues in Dublin.

imogensweeney99@gmail.com

From Place to Non-Place

This thesis investigates the process of cultural venues being replaced by hotels in Dublin. The focus of the analysis is on the former venue of the Tivoli theatre in order to understand the value placed upon cultural venues by a range of groups from the communities and subcultures that utilised the venues to the local planning authorities in the city. In order to gain a more in depth understanding of how cultural venues are valued in Dublin, three theoretical frameworks are used to analyse the different stages in the functioning of the Tivoli theatre throughout this thesis. The concept of heterotopia is applied to the stage when the Tivoli theatre was a functioning cultural venue, allowing for the consideration of the value of the venue for those that utilised it. The concept blind spot is then applied to the stage when the Tivoli theatre was shut down and demolished, as it allows for the consideration of the value that the local planning authorities placed upon the venue. Finally, the Tivoli theatre is looked at through the concept of non-place at the stage when the venue is replaced by a hotel. Thus, further expanding the discussion, and considering the wider process of cultural venues being replaced by hotels in the city. By looking at the venue using these three theoretical frameworks, it provides an opportunity for a broader understanding of the value placed upon cultural venues in the city. This discussion has shown that despite the communities and subcultures that regularly utilise the cultural venues placing significant value upon the venues, this same value is not recognised by the local planning authorities in Dublin. This thesis suggests that considering these frameworks in future planning schemes in Dublin may achieve a more in depth understanding of the value that cultural venues have in the city and the benefit they can have for the city as a whole.