concrete

Current
The Voice of Inconstant Savage
[Commissioned Work] This multifaceted, polyphonic and immersive sound installation by Yasuhiro Morinaga establishes a historical encounter between Portuguese culture and Japan, memories and myths that remain and coexist with other cultures of the Amazon. Commissioned for the Engawa – Japanese Contemporary Art Season programme , The Voice of Inconstant (2023) 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
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.

Concert
SETAN JAWA
Setan Jawa is a contemporary silent film directed by Indonesian master film director, Garin Nugroho to be screened with accompanying live music, under the concept of "Expanded Cinema". This masterpiece was internationally premiered in Melbourne in Australia, followed by worldwide screenings and performances including in Singapore, Amsterdam and Berlin. Japan premiere will be held in Tokyo on July 2nd, 2019 with the 3D sound designed by an emerging sound artist Yasuhiro Morinaga and with the participation by KOM_I, vocalist of "Wednesday Campanella."

Cinema
The Cloud of Unknowing
The Cloud of Unknowing
Ho Tzu Nyen’s multichannel video installation The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) explores the expansive subject of the representation of the elusive and amorphous cloud. Inspired by philosopher Hubert Damisch’s thesis on the form’s aesthetics and symbolism, A Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting, first published in French in 1972, Ho’s work incorporates a set of eight compartmentalized vignettes, each centered on a character that stands for the cloud’s representation in historically significant Western European artworks by artists including Caravaggio, Francisco de Zurbarán, Antonio da Correggio, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Andrea Mantegna, and René Magritte, as well as the Eastern landscapes of Mi Fu and Wen Zhengming. This incorporation and blending of cultural, historical, and philosophical references, both Eastern and Western, is prevalent in Ho’s practice, which references painting (EARTH, 2009), pop music (The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006), literature (The King Lear Project, 2008) and philosophy (Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One, 2009).