Thursday, 19 May 2016

The group has finished “Oxen of the Sun” and started episode 15, “Circe”. It stopped at Lynch's exclaiming, “Ba!” (15.114).

Catherine Meyer sends an illustration for this blog. She notes:

In the last paragraph of “oxen oft he sun” medical dick and medical davy made another little appearance. Fritz told us about the dick and davy cafeteria at the universitätsspital and that it is worth a visit. So I went to have a look and made a boring illustration of the cafeteria. Cafeterias are sober and furnished with the sole view of being easy to clean. 

But the story around the cafeteria is rather nice. Hannes Vogel, who makes art and installations on objects and in public spaces and is a former reading group associate, designed the dick and davy cafeteria.

Outside the cafeteria are 8 pillars, of which 7 are already labelled with ulysses translations in 7 different languages: swedish, italian, finnish, german, english, french and greek. Not only in “oxen oft he sun” have dick and davy made an appearance, but also in an earlier episode called  “scylla and charybdis”. From the latter chapter, hannes vogel chose the following lines (extracted from quite a long passage): “Stephen (stringendo): He has hidden his name, (…)  Medical Dick and medical Davy (two birds with one stone)” (9.921–1184).

As according to stephen william shakespeare's first name looks like the shape of cassiopia, vogel designed the ceiling with nightspots making a w-shape.

The illuminated logo on the dark wall, dick and davy, is formed out of different characters in various fonts which vogel found in words or places that are somehow linked with joyce. As words they are a little bit of ulysses and as illuminated letter-material a little bit of lightening Zürich (this is what is written in the publication about vogel’s installation).

My little drawing shows the lovely view out of the cafeteria onto the 8 pillars and the rear with the cafeteria's logo.

© Catherine Meyer, Zürich 2016