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

EARTH
“Earth” is a film that consists of three long slow motion shots. It depicts a landscape after a catastrophe – human bodies are mixed here with coils of wire, fragments of pallets and cardboard boxes, as well as dead fish and chaotically flashing light bulbs. The work bears a marked reference to European painting, especially French Romantic painting. The film has borrowed inspiration from Theodore Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” from 1819, one of the most significant paintings in France after the Revolution. Also noticeable are references to pieces by Eugene Delacroix (“The Massacre at Chios”, 1824) and Caravaggio (“The Incredulity of Saint Thomas”, 1601-1602 and “David with the Head of Goliath”, ca 1599). The artist’s fascination with old painting – highlighted by the strong light of fluorescent tubes that imitate the chiaroscuro effect of the Baroque paintings – was juxtaposed in the film with the contemporary electronic soundtrack of Black to Comm. Played in slow motion, the music seems hardly recognisable combining two temporally and geographically distant motifs.

Performing arts

Kenta Kojiri + Yasuhiro Morinaga : COROLI
A performative installation that evokes memory Based on the theme of "recording" the "memory" that has been the basis of previous creations, this is an attempt to approach the sense of "flavor" that appears when you visit a certain place. Using the "places" observed and collected by each artist in the theatre, we will try to reconstruct the places that did not coexist, using the sensations and imaginations brought from the space as clues. By inviting the audience to the place of creation, we will guide the existence of a "performative installation" where humans and the environment come and go while further integrating and dismantling.