Dublin-New York Portal Reopens After Flashing and Other Shenanigans

The Portal is back. For now.

On Sunday afternoon in Dublin, a big, round art installation that livestreams video between Dublin’s city center and the Flatiron district in Manhattan returned after being shut off on May 14 because of questionable behavior by visitors on both sides.

Some of that behavior showed up in videos on social media that showed an OnlyFans model lifting her shirt in New York and people in Dublin displaying swastikas and images of the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001. In less than a week since its unveiling on May 8, the Portal had “attracted tens of thousands of visitors,” the installation’s organizers said in a statement.

Then, on Sunday, at 2 p.m. local time in Dublin, the Portal returned, without much fanfare.

Located just off O’Connell Street, next to a statue of the Irish writer James Joyce, the big round screen sits close to a busy thoroughfare in the center of Dublin. At 11 a.m. on Monday, it attracted a steady crowd of onlookers — made up of locals, tourists and Bruce Springsteen fans in town for his concert on Sunday night — for the second day of its reawakening.

What the crowd saw seemed to be equal parts exciting and underwhelming: an empty street in the Flatiron district with the occasional commuter or dog walker.

“I don’t really understand what the point of it is,” said Patrick Grant, a Canadian who has been living in Ireland for seven years. He said he wasn’t surprised that people behaved the way they did. “Lads are going to be lads.”

The goal of the artwork had been to “redefine the boundaries of artistic expression and connectivity” and create a sense of “joy and connectedness” for participants, according to a statement from its organizers, the Dublin City Council, the Flatiron NoMad Partnership and Portals.org.