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’.

Performing arts
MARGINAL GONGS
東南アジアの島々全域で長きにわたり、最も重要な楽器とされてきた青銅器ゴング。人々の間で語り継がれてきたゴングにまつわる説話をモチーフに「過去と現在」「民族と国籍」「聖と俗」「肉体と魂」「時間と空間」様々な価値観を最新のメディアテクノロジーとサウンドデザインで越境する新たな物語。パフォーマー・映像・照明・立体音響、現代アジア最高のスタッフを結集し作り上げる舞台作品『MARGINALGONGS』。

Publication
Yasuhiro Morinaga + Roberto Paci Dalo 『Japanese Girls at the Harbor』
『Japanese Girls at the Harbor』
CONCRETE presents new CD release, “Japanese Girls at the Harbor.” This is the sonorization for Japanese silent film classic, “Minato no Nihon Musume”by Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933. This CD is the collaborative project between Japanese sound designer, Yasuhiro Morinaga and Italian multimedia artist, Roberto Paci Dalo. The movie Japanese Girls at the Harbor(Minato no Nihon musume) – directed by Hiroshi Shimizu in 1933 – is one of the most modern and intercultural Japanese silent films ever produced. Morinaga and Paci Dalo’s new soundtrack for the film creates alternative narrative structures through a complex layering of noise, voices, drones, environmental, instrumental, and electronic sounds.  

Cinema
THE SCIENCE OF FICTIONS
In 1962, Siman, a solitary farmer, came to Gumuk, sandy bare land. Siman was witnessing a shooting of a fiction film about man landing on the moon. It was an unlucky day for him, Siman was caught by the army and got his tongue chopped off.Soekarno, the first president of Republic Indonesia, came to Gumuk, brought with him a Bolex 8mm camera. From the distance, he made a “the making of” man-landing-on-the-moon film. And the politics went so wrong. Under the new regime, A New Order of Soeharto, Siman was then being named as an insane person because he often moves stupidly, acting as if he is walking on the moon. In the village, Siman built a strange cubical building looking like a robotic machine that he saw in the sands. Siman designed an astronaut costume, and always uses a white helmet every time he goes out of his house. All the villagers agree that Siman is insane, but what he did is actually words and the only way he knows to show the truth. He is the only one who knew about the worlds biggest lie.