concrete

Installation
The Voice of Inconstant Savage
Commissioned for the Engawa – Japanese Contemporary Art Season programme organized by Calouste Gulbenkian Museum's Modern Art Center, The Voice of Inconstant Savage is an immersive installation that superimposes a prayer inspired by the story of a 16th-century Portuguese missionary, a chant from a Kakure-Kirishitan (hidden Christians) prayer – a religion rooted in Nagasaki Prefecture –, a chant from the Karawara spirits of the Awá indigenous people – who live in the Amazon rainforest – and a chorus of Western Gregorian chant. Morinaga questions the position of the aesthetics of inconstancy in relation to the discourse of the “savage” that modern society confronts.

Field recordings
Sombat Simla: Master Of Bamboo Mouth Organ
Simla is known in Thailand as one of the greatest living players of the khene, the ancient bamboo mouth organ particularly associated with Laos but found throughout East and Southeast Asia. His virtuosic and endlessly inventive renditions of traditional and popular songs have earned him the title ‘the god of khene’, and he is known for his innovative techniques and ability to mimic other instruments and non-musical sound, including, as a writer for the Bangkok Post describes, ‘the sound of a train journey, complete with traffic crossings and the call of barbecue chicken vendors’.

Field recordings
Gong Culture of Southeast Asia「Co-Ho」
The Co-Ho people are an ethnic group living in the southern part of the central highlands of Vietnam. They speak a Mon-Khmer language. Co-Ho are animists who make a division between two types of supernatural spirits: the first type, with human characteristics, is called "Yang" - these are gods which are worshipped during ceremonies and important rituals to prevent from bac luck, which is represented by the second type of spirits, called "Cha" = devils. The music of Co-Ho people serves different rituals and thus there are different styles of gong music, played on both flat and knobbed gongs. Usually an ensemble consists of six gongs. On this recording, the number of gongs ranges from 2 to 6. On the occasions where music is performed in duo(such as first track), a small ritual is conducted as a means to show respect to the ancestors. This particular track is quite rare and consists of improvisation and call&response. If one of the gong players is unable to follow the other one, the player who fails to follow needs to drink rice wine from the vase. For this album, two locations for 2 groups in total were visited. One of the groups had forgotten how to play gong music: they had a new member and they had not practiced for a while, being busy with their daily lives (track 6&7). The other group played gong music well: this ensemble was constituted of members of the same family, who often meet and play together (track1-5).

Cinema
Uzu
The Autumn Festival of Dogo, one of the most violent religious festivals in Japan, takes place each year in the town of Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku. From the meticulous preparation to the battle, it is above all an immersive plunge into a mysterious and abstruse ceremony reported by Gaspard Kuentz (to whom we owe notably Kings of the Wind & Electric Queens, co-direct- ed with Cédric Dupire, VdR 2014). Alternating between external and distant viewpoints – such as the women leaning on the balcony to watch – and the perspective of an on-board and subjective camera, intertwining silence into the tumult of the collective trance, Uzu builds the immersive account of an event and conserves the tension required to evoke the brutal assault. Somewhere between visual ethnography and war reporting, a sensorial choreography imbued with violence, in submission to the chief.