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’.

Concert

Anabiosis Passage
"Anabiosis Passage" is a concert in which media technologies creates pioneering music based on Indonesian music cultures including the traditional, pop, and modern music. This unique work stems from "To Belong", the modern dance work by choreographer, Akiko Kitamura, in which Yasuhiro Morinaga takes part as a music director. "Anabiosis Passage" features sounds which Morinaga fieldrecorded in Indonesia, and musicians he met then. This work interprets the Indonesian culture in a modern context by dealing with gamelan, Kroncong, and Hip Hop music and local environmental sounds of Indonesia. This work also deals with the Indonesian musical instruments including the style of rendition and narrative literature as motifs, and creates a modern ritual space based on media technologies. Morinaga from Japan takes the roles of music director and electronic manipulator. Musicians of a string quartet and a pianist are also invited to this work from Japan. "Anabiosis Passage" is definitely a work in which tradition and modernity interact with one another between Indonesia and Japan.  

Cinema

A Ripe Volcano
A Ripe Volcano reflects Bangkok as a site of mental eruption and emotionally devastated land during the heights of terrors, primal fears, trauma, and the darkness of time. A Ripe Volcano revisits The Rattanakosin Hotel, the site where the military troops captured and tortured the civilians, students and protesters who were hiding inside the hotel during the Black May of 1992; and Rajadamnern Stadium, a Roman amphitheatre styled Muay Thai boxing arena, which was built in 1941-45 during the Second World War and since then has become the theatrical labyrinth of physical and mental explosions. The work builds around the recollections of human experiences that took place within these spaces and shifts through the mental space distilled from the possessed memory of wounded time.