Reflections on the workshop ‘Putting Up Door’.

A workshop to contemplate the other side of familiar landscapes’ Myanmar artist Maung Day’s work the ‘Monument of Doubt’, which was shown at our exhibition. An interesting work that recalls the other side of the story that a place has/remembers through a person with a door walking around various (sometimes politically symbolic) places in the city of Ho Chi Minh City. “Even here in Shirahama, a place overflowing with iconic tourist attractions, isn’t it possible to cast ‘doubt’ on the scene, as in Maung Day?” Based on this theme, a workshop was held on 26 May (Sunday), where participants actually put up a door and looked once again at the scenery they have become accustomed to seeing from their own perspectives.

The participants gathered in Nong Krong on the day of the workshop and went around discussing “spots where we would like to put up a door” and other spots that came to mind at the time, and put up a door. First of all, the door was put up in front of Shirahama Station, which is the entrance and exit of Shirahama. Because there are a lot of tourists these days, we had the tourists actually go through the door.

The second place, we put up the door to the pier in Shirahama. we felt an otherworldly atmosphere just by having a door in the sea, which we are usually used to seeing.

At the third location, a door was erected in Ezura. There is a part in common with the jetty, but we think that a new discovery could be made with the tetrapod and the door again. The people after scuba diving were just there, so I asked them to go through the door.

Finally, we put up the door to Shirahama, which is the most famous beach in Shirahama. We think that the moment the door was put up in the pure white sandy beach and clear blue sky, the face of Shirahama, which is different from Shirahama up to now, was seen.

In this workshop, we were able to realise that just by having one different thing in the scenery that we are used to seeing as usual, we were able to change my way of looking at it and perceive it in a new way. Once again, we think that by actually feeling Maung Day’s work on our skin, we could feel the art as if we were inside the work.