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’.

Cinema
Siege – A Closed Off Man
In 1935, the First High School (旧制第一高等学校) was relocated from Hongo to Komaba, where the students were separated from others and enhanced their homogeneity as First High School students by holing up on the campus. However, in an increasingly intense World War II, it was no longer possible to maintain the identity of the First High School. In the consciousness of a student, “I”, who has been devoting himself to research in a desire to identify with the First High School students, the image of First High School in the Komaba Campus era appears.

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.

Performing arts
MEDIUM
Medium is a deeply personal portrait of Rianto the dancer. Featuring himself and Javanese musician Cahwati on a bare stage, the piece goes to the roots of Indonesian traditional dance and music, exploring nature, spirituality and ritual with a stark minimalism. Rianto, who dances barefoot with trance-like concentration, moves from controlled, hypnotic movements to frenzied shaking. In his body, we see a fluid amalgamation which has stored movements from contemporary dance, classical Javanese dance and lengger, a traditional cross-gender dance from Central Java, in which he has trained since young. Accompanying him, alternating between roles as partner, lover, friend and mother, is Cahwati, who plays a variety of instruments and contributes live vocals.