Cross-cultural Identity Through Clay, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan. 4th of October to 4th of November 2018 (Local Japanese People pressing their fingers into tiles)

Wen-Hsi standing outside the supermarket with the unfired clay tiles ready for people to press their fingers into the clay.

Interacting with local Japanese people. As we can not speak Japanese we had a Japanese translation of the project written on paper that included a questionnaire.

Japanese people pressing their fingers into the clay tiles.

This video documents part of Martin and Wen-Hsi Harman's artist residency project in Shigaraki Japan.

The questionnaire written in Japanese

On the 14th of October 2018 we went to a local supermarket in Shigaraki to invite local Japanese people to press their fingers into unfired clay tiles. We also took with us a written Japanese description of the project that included a questionnaire that asked people questions. These questions included: What does a fingerprint mean for the them? What represents Japanese Cultural Identity?

These tiles will be used to form a sculptural path to be installed in the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park. 

It was an interesting experience as we had the opportunity to interact with the public and watch their reactions to this interactive project. We found young people were more willing to have a go more than older people. Some people used allot of pressure to press their fingers into the clay, others were more gentle and others took a curious approach by thinking about their action.