Arterritory Invites: Multimedia Project “Doors”
Mazirbe, August 2
On August 2, as part of the Livonian Festival 2025 in Latvia, the art and culture portal Arterritory.com will unveil its multimedia project Doors / Durvis in Mazirbe. It is a synergistic story of art and nature, with its conceptual starting point—and one of its central images—being an ancient barn door once found by Dainis Stalts, a long-time guardian of Livonian traditions. This symbolic object represented Latvia at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington in 1989, telling the story of a small nation on the Baltic Sea.
After spending several years in the home of Dainis Stalts' daughter, Julgī Stalte, in Košrags on the Livonian coast, the doors have now reopened and returned to the public sphere—as an invitation to cooperation and a reminder of our roots and interconnectedness with both living and non-living nature.
Like a totem holding centuries of layers—touches, emotions, vibrations, memories, and events—the doors are now part of an art installation by artist Reinis Dzudzilo. In this sculptural diptych, the doors take on a mythical, central presence. One part of the diptych has found its place on the stage of the Sunset Concerts in Mazirbe, where the ancient barn doors levitate in the air, opening and closing in response to the breath and pathways of Mother Wind.
The other part of the artwork, located by the sea, contrasts with a gesture of contemporary simplicity and quiet absurdity: two road signs—two arrows—placed side by side. This composition makes a clear allusion to continuity, transformation, choice, and freedom. “Two arrows in two rectangles are not just what we see,” says Reinis Dzudzilo. “For those familiar with road signs, these are road signs No. 503 and No. 504, which indicate a one-way street. When combined, these two one-way arrows facing each other form a portal—just like a pair of doors, windows, or gate wings.”
Doors can connect different realms and states of being; they can open and close. Doors symbolize the gift of choice, transformation, and freedom. They are places of protection, encounters, and secrets—a portal, an opportunity, the unknown. The mystery of the door image—the act of opening and closing portals, being in the moment, and experiencing its fullness—is the leitmotif of the Doors project. This theme also appears in Dainis Pundurs’ ephemeral sand sculpture The Observer, which will be unveiled on Mazirbe beach on August 2. This marks the third time the artist has returned to the Livonian coast in response to an invitation from Arterritory.com. Quoting William Blake, Pundurs reminds us that: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite.”
Program for the Opening Day of the "Doors" Project:
13:00 – Opening of Dainis Pundurs’ sand sculpture The Observer on Mazirbe Beach
17:00 – A symbolic ritual rooted in Livonian traditions: Opening the World of Doors / Perception / Sensations / Signs — a walk with Julgī Stalte
(Starting point: Mazirbe Sunset Concert Meadow)
20:00 – Reading by philosopher Kaspars Eihmanis: “Gateway to the Other: The Ambiguity of Doors in Ancient Cultural and Philosophical Traditions”
Followed by conversations (Mazirbe Sunset Concert Meadow)
The project is implemented by Arterritory.com in collaboration with the association Mazirbes kultūrtelpa and Julgī Stalte.
