Livin' it large

There are buildings scattered in towns across Ireland that appear to have been designed less by architects than by history itself. They stand there, weathered, absorbed by generations, decisions and those who use them. Cavan Courthouse, which recent celebrated its bicentennial commemoration, having originally opened in 1825, is one such building.

Solid, grand, faintly austere. Soon, however, it will have to loosen up.

Three hundred years ago author Jonathan Swift turned the local landscapes and obsessions of his age into one of the literary world's greatest journeys. And now Cavan is preparing to bring the story of Gulliver's Travels into the modern age.

On Sunday, October 25, the courthouse building's neo-classical ashlar facade will become a ship, a city, a palace, a landscape of Lilliputians, beset by Brobdingnagians- and, for a few extraordinary minutes, a portal into the world of Swift's imagination at a time he frequented Quilca House near Mullagh, and also Swanlinbar, where his uncle lived and worked, precisely as his book was taking shape.

The last time Cavan witnessed digital projection on this scale, it was the former Ulster Bank on Main Street in 2010, during the first of three successive All Ireland fleadhanna.

Behind the project is Sergey Khadzhava, a multi-media artist, VJ and AV technician whose work spans cinema, architecture, theatre and a particularly sophisticated kind of public mischief.

His speciality is projection mapping: taking a physical structure and making it appear as though the architecture itself is moving.

Since being forced to leave his hometown of Kherson following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sergey has continued his creative life here in Ireland, contributing to events including Electric Picnic, All Together Now, Beyond The Pale, Night and Day, Emerge, Dublin Winter Lights, Longford Lights and Westival.

Now he is set to bring Gulliver 'home'.

“More than anything, I want people to feel proud - proud of where they live, their town, their culture, and their heritage,” he told the Celt. “The goal is not to illustrate a book, but to find visual metaphors that can replace words.”

Simply turning giants, tiny people, strange animals, ships, storms, foreign lands and elaborate political satire into pictures might seem straightforward enough.

The real challenge however is making the building believe them.

To do that fellow artist Anastasiia Zasimchuk designed an interactive presentation and workshops held at Johnston Central library where children from Cavan learned about Swift’s life, Gulliver, met the inhabitants of his book, explored the curious laws, and completed drawings under the guidance of Ludmila Vechirko.

These drawings have been digitised, animated, and are part of the projection installation.

“It is important that the audience doesn't see it simply as a video projected onto a building. The building itself becomes part of the story.”

Recent research by historian Melanie Ward has helped illuminate the connection between Swift and Cavan. Letters written by Swift from Quilca in 1725 indicate he was transcribing stories during his time there. A year later, Gulliver's Travels was published.

Then there are the stories from Swanlinbar.

Local oral tradition tells of Swift, visiting his uncle, becoming lost in the thick and wet west county fog and eventually finding a house, where he fell asleep beside the fire. When he awoke, two young boys had reportedly tied his hair to a chair and were prodding him with sticks.

Another slice of delicious folklore is that Swift based Gulliver’s proportions on a legendary local farmer known as ‘Big Doughty’, whose extraordinary strength was legendary after he was spotted carrying a calf over a wall.

It is difficult to resist the claim that Gulliver was then in fact a Cavan man all along.

For Karina Charles Lynch, Arts Officer with Cavan County Council, the phrase isn't simply a blurb to splash for marketing attention. For her and the the team behind this project, it is a way of understanding “an important chapter in a global cultural story” that happened here locally.

It's important to note that great work of global and historic importance can happen somewhere other than London, Paris, New York or even Dublin.

“It reminds us that great ideas can emerge from unexpected places and that rural communities can make contributions to world culture that echo across centuries,” she suggests.

Swift's great gift was making the familiar strange. It's therefore tempting to imagine Swift arriving in contemporary Cavan and his expression having just been told what TikTok is.

What would he make of the place? What would surprise him? And what would he recognise most?

Karina says the biggest surprise would not be Cavan itself but the extraordinary scale of its connections.

“For a county on the edge of Europe, he would discover artists, musicians and writers collaborating regionally, nationally and across Europe and ideas travelling around the world in seconds rather than weeks,” she says. “For a writer who was fascinated by human nature, that spirit of curiosity, conversation and wit can still be found here in Cavan.”

This free event, part of the wider Gulliver’s Travels 300 Cultural Celebration funded through Cultúr 2026 as part of Cavan Eco Féile, takes place at Cavan Courthouse, Sunday, October 25, 2-8pm. The digital projection mapping spectacle starts after 7pm, followed by a lantern parade through the streets of Cavan Town. A free family-friendly afternoon will meanwhile feature creative workshops, music, art and theatrical performances and interactive activities celebrating Swift’s literary masterpiece.